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The Jack-in-the-Box Books 

THE BOTTLE IMP 

MARION AMES TAGGART 


The Jack-in-thfi-Box Books 

BY 

MARION AMES TAGGART 

Illustrated hy 

ANNE MERBIMAN PECK 


at GREENACRES 
THE QUEER LITTLE MAN 
THE BOTTLE IMP 
POPPY’S PLUCK 











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“my! some island!” cried mark 


The Jack -in -the- Box Books 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


BY 

MARION AMES TAGGART 

AUTHOR OF “the LITTLE GREY HOUSE,” 

“the daughters of the little 

GREY HOUSE,” ETC. 


Illustrated hy 
ANNE MERRIMAN PECK 



NEW 


YORK 


GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 




COPYRIGHT, 19211 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



S[? 16 j 


'■n. I 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


g)[:U624378 


DEDICATED 

TO 

MARION TAGGART GERHART 

WITH LOVE FOR 
THAT DEAR LITTLE GIRL 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTBB PAGE 

I Marching Orders 13 

II The Crew op the Bottle Imp ... 28 

III The Bottle Imp Weighs Anchor ... 43 

IV A Lamb Astray 57 

V “General Israel Putnam’" .... 71 

VI Business and Pleasure ...... 85 

VII The Island 100 

VIII The Invader 113 

IX On the Road to Lytelton . . . . 126 

X Lytelton at Last! 140 

XI Little Jean and Lesser Jean . . , 155 

XII The Glowing Forge 170 

XIII Any Port in a Storm ...... 184 

XIV Rash Isabel 198 

XV The Lucky Natives 212 

XVI The Bottle Imp Comes to Anchor . . 226 

[vii] 





ILLUSTRATIONS 


“My! Some Island!’* Cried Mark . . . Frontispiece 

PAGE 

“Well, My Grandmother Jane !” Exclaimed 

Leander 64 

“I’m Going Too, So There !” Declared Poppy . . 88 

She Gathered Him Into Her Broad Lap and 

Began to Rock Him Hard 144 

He Held Up His Arms and Mr. Burke Placed 

Little Jean in Them 176 



THE BOTTLE IMP 















THE BOTTLE IMP 


CHAPTER I 


MARCHING ORDERS 


HATEAU BRANCHE taken one way 



was not as fine as it sounded ; from another 
point of riew it was finer than a mere name could 
convey. 

It was a platform strongly built in the lower 
— not too low — ^branches of a noble old tree ; near 
enough to home to make it possible to go there 
whenever one chose ; far enough in the woods to 
make it feel like being a wild creature to chmb 
up to sit there, listening to the humming of the 
brook close by. 

Mark Hawthorne’s wonderful father, the 
“daddy” who knew all about birds, beasts and 
flowers and consequently never forgot what chil- 
dren liked, had built Chateau Branche for Mark 
and his friends. He had made it large enough 
and to spare for Mark and the three little girls 
from whom Mark was never long separated — 
Isabel Lindsay, Prue Wayne and Poppy 


[ 13 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


Meiggs, whose name really was Gladys, but no- 
body remembered it without an effort. 

The four children were sitting in — ^perhaps it 
would be more correct to say on — Chateau 
Branche this lovely May afternoon, which was all 
sunshine and fleecy clouds above, and all blossom 
and young green below, with a warm breeze 
imiting the upper and lower parts of the loveli- 
ness, a day so summerhke that a bat should have 
stayed awake to play around in it. 

Yet the four children in their tree-playhouse, 
usually such light-hearted, happy comrades, sat 
amid the May-time beauty almost silent, their 
faces gloomy, their eyes dinj. Poppy’s and 
Prue’s eyes were swollen and reddened by cry- 
ing; Isabel’s and Mark’s were dilated by unshed 
tears. 

“Well,” said Prue breaking a long silence, “if 
you’ve got to go to get well, Isa darling, then 
there’s no sense in fussing, not over your going. 
The thing to make us die would be for you not 
to get well! So if going away cures you, I shall 
try ’s hard’s I can to want you to go. But I 
don’t! I do not r 

“H’m!’ exclaimed Poppy scornfully. “Who 
would? You needn’t talk ’s if Isabel Lindsay 
was only your summer-knocking-to-pieces-best- 
beloved! I guess summer’ll be one awful holler 
[ 14 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

hole for me if she goes off — Mark, tool And it’s 
only just starting! I’ll be just all ravelled out 
and dragged all over the place, like the kitten did 
to that awful knitting Motherkins tried to learn 
— ^teach me, before it comes around September! 
Oh, my land!” And Poppy choked. 

Isabel pul out her hand and gently patted 
Poppy’s flaming red hair with the soothing, 
motherly touch with which she so often calmed 
excitable little Poppy. 

“Never mind, dear,” she said in her mother’s 
own manner. “I’m sorry enough myself to be 
going, and I’d no idea I had anything the matter 
with me when I felt so draggy last winter, ex- 
cept that I did feel draggy, but the doctors all 
said exactly the same thing. I’ve got to spend 
this whole summer out of doors. You’d think 
there would be enough out of doors around 
Greenacres to hold small me, but the doctors say 
the only way to get well is to go right off some- 
where, because at home I’d be sure to crawl into 
the house — ^like spiders in the fall!” Isabel 
ended with a laugh. 

“I don’t understand,” said Mark slowly. 

“What?” demanded Prue sharply. 

“Anything,” Mark smiled, but his eyes, which 
were exactly the color of the russet oak leaves 
which cling to the branches in winter, were dark, 

[ 15 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


and did not smile. “But they all say you’ll be 
quite all right after you’ve done what you are 
told, don’t they, Isa Bell? They do, don’t they, 
Isa Bell?” 

“Sure-ly!” cried Isabel with the utmost em- 
phasis. “I’ll tell you! There’s a spot on one of 
my lungs, but it’s a spot like the ones on my 
lovely voile, the one I had last summer which 
faded so. It will go right off in the sun and 
air. All three doctors stethescoped me, and 
tapped me, and mm-mured nice little sounds 
themselves, with their ears on my sounds, and 
they all three liked my sounds quite well. They 
said ‘it would clear up completely.’ You might 
think they were each one of those funny little 
men which pop out of barometers, and that I was 
a storm! But they did say my lung ‘had a spot’ 
and must be kept out of doors this whole summer. 
So I’ve got to go. It’s bad enough for me to 
go off alone; you haven’t thought of that! 
You’ll all have one another. Of course my darl- 
ingest blessing of a mother is going too, and we 
have fine times together, so we’ll like a camp in 
the Maine woods, and father will try for a long 
vacation and spend it with us, but — I like my 
chums !” 

Isabel’s voice broke as she ended her long 
reply to Mark’s question. 

[ 16 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

With a sudden swift dart Poppy plunged for- 
ward and clutched her knee, paying no heed to 
the fact that she sat on the extreme edge of the 
platform. She would have gone off headlong 
but that Prue caught her by her skirt, and held 
her. 

“For goodness’ sake, Poppy Meiggs, what’s 
the matter with you?” demanded Prue, with the 
pardonable wrath of a sensible person whose 
nerves were badly shocked. 

“Skeets!” said Poppy, squirming around into 
safety, but rubbing her knee with all her might 
as she did so. “They’re eating me. I didn’t 
know I was on the edge. Ain’t any of you bit — 
bitten? They’re fierce. They come out these hot 
days in May, ’specially around pines. I bet it’s 
as big as a hick’ry nut, this bite ; on my knee, too, 
where it’s too boney to get much good going for 
it. I’d like to get a whack at all the skeets in 
the world vdth one awful lick! I’d like to keep 
a crocydile to sit under this tree with his big 
mouth open to snap at ’em, same’s Bunkie does, 
only the crocydile could snap the whole gang, 
’most, in one shut of his big mouth; Bunkie don’t 
do n’ good.” 

Poppy leaned forward to survey the ragged 
little terrier who sat under the tree with his 
mouth open, patiently waiting till the children 

[ 17 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


should descend to him again. He was panting 
from the sudden heat; he wagged his tail enthu- 
siastically as Poppy spoke his name and peered 
over at him, and he snapped at the mosquitoes 
violently, as if wishing to come up as far as he 
could to the crocodile standard of capacity to 
catch them. 

Isabel, Prue and Mark laughed, and felt bet- 
ter. It was not the first time that Poppy’s 
imagination and actions had broken up a sober 
mood. 

“What I don’t see,” Prue resumed the impor- 
tant subject in hand with her customary air of 
experienced common sense, “is just what you 
sort of began to say a while ago, Isa: Why you 
can’t stay around Greenacres and just keep out 
of doors right here. I should think there was 
enough room to do it!” Prue made a gesture 
with her right arm that indicated the woods in 
which they sat and all the adjoining coimtry. 

“If you didn’t want to go into the house 
couldn’t you stay in your tent? And there’s one 
sure thing: We’d all pretty near camp out with 
you I We’d hang around like, like — ^hang around 
every day! I thought the doctors said it didn’t 
matter what out of doors you stayed in — out — 
what on earth ought I say there? — as long as it 
was a sunny and airy out of doors. And every 
[ 18 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


one says Greenacres has the very best chmate 
going, every one who lives here, and so really 
knows about it.” 

“Yes, but they say the way to get well is to 
keep away from your own house, because you’re 
pretty sure to go into it,” explained Isabel over 
again. “We’ve got to set out to do something 
special — like a camp, or something. It wouldn’t 
do any harm to stay around here, because, of 
course, Greenacres is perfect, but we wouldn’t 
hold out — ^that means stay out! — unless we had 
a kind of special program.” 

Now there are a great many days in real hfe, 
outside of story books, in which nothing happens 
at aU, and it is rarely that something comes along 
at precisely the right instant, as if it were in a 
play, waiting at the stage wings for the word to 
be spoken which is its entrance cue. 

Yet this happens once in a while, and it hap- 
pened to-day when this devoted quartette of 
friends was cast down by the on-coming separa- 
tion from the dearest one of them all — ^if there 
were a dearest where all were dear. 

“Would there be anything at all like three 
girls and one boy in these woods, I’m wonder- 
ing?” called a rich, throaty voice. 

A man came in sight, somewhat above medium 
height, stockily built, dressed in a rough and 

[ 19 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 

ready fashion, with a rough and ready air upon 
him. 

His face was round and red, weather beaten, 
yet his skin still showed its natural fineness of 
texture after years of exposure to winds and 
sun. He had bright blue eyes, close-cropped 
hair, beginning to turn a little gray around his 
temples, and such a look of merriment upon him 
that it was almost like hearing laughter to see 
him. 

“Oh, my cracky! Mr. Burke!” shouted Poppy, 
and hurled herself out of the tree in such wise 
that she almost miraculously landed whole at 
the ruddy man’s feet. 

“Mr. Burke! Oh, Mr. Burke!” echoed the 
other three, and rapidly descended after Poppy. 

“Sure!” Mr. Burke agi-eed to their identifica- 
tion of himself. “I’m that same noble bottle 
collector and dealer in bottles. I left the wagon, 
with Cork hitched to it, over beyond and came 
in here to call on ye all. How’s the missus?” He 
seemed to have heard Prue’s inquiry for his wife 
though he was talking loudly. “She’s fine and 
dandy, never better — ^nor never worse, if it comes 
to that. In body and heart and soul it’s Mrs. 
Thomas Burke of 906 North Street, Hertons- 
berg, that is the one to be counted on for steadi- 
ness at the best grade. But what about all of 
[ 20 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

you? I can see that my friend Poppy is not 
ailin’! Poppy, since the day I oveiiook you 
runnin’ away on that dusty high road, and took 
you on home with me to be put in cold storage 
till called for, you haven’t done a thing but grow 
taller and healthier lookin’. Sure, it’s fine you’re 
lookin’, my dear, and it’s your intimate crony, 
Thomas Burke, Bottle Dealer, that’s proud to 
see it and claim the honor of your friendship! 
Cork’s much the same as ever, maybe less am- 
bitious, but well and thrivin’ and good for many’s 
the day to come. How’s yom* own Hurrah?” 

“He’s getting lovelier every minute, Mr. 
Burke,” Poppy assured him solemnly, and the 
bottle dealer winked at the others; Poppy’s 
enthusiasm for the old horse which had been 
given her was a standing joke. “Hurrah goes 
along faster than he ever did, and you know how 
he could trot if ever he wanted to! And he’s 
handsomer than ever, and you know how hand- 
some he was when I got him, after he’d been a 
little bit fixed up.” 

“Great!” said Mr. Burke. “If there’s one 
thing I like better than any other thing it’s a 
blooded horse that’s well looked after.” 

Poppy eyed him suspiciously, but Mr. Burke 
looked gravely earnest. 

“And the rest of you now?” he hinted. “I’d 

[ 21 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


be tempted to say you was not up to your 
j oiliest, could that be likely. How’s yourself, 
Isabel, ladybird?” 

“Isabel’s not well, Mr. Burke,” Prue answered 
for her. 

“She looks a little droopin’, now you say it,” 
said Mr. Burke commiseratingly. 

“What was that rumor I was bearin’? I 
stopped in to your place, Mark, lad, as I come 
past and I was talkin’ to that small, thin, queer 
little man, Ichabod Lemuel Budd, and to Flossie 
Doolittle. Of all names that might misfit that 
woman who works for your little grandmother, 
it would be hard to beat Flossie Doolittle! 
Ichabod Lemuel Budd for that poor little mis- 
shapen man, and Flossie Doolittle for that 
woman sure would walk away with the whole 
bakery, let be who would competin’ to take the 
cake! Well, be that as it may, Ichabod and 
Flossie kind of gave me to understand that our 
Ladybird Isabel was not what you’d call robust 
this spring, and was ordered to stop out af doors 
the livelong summer, campin’ away from home.” 
Mr. Burke paused with a questioning look at the 
four sober young faces before him, waiting for 
confirmation. 

The three little girls silently nodded. Mark 

[ 22 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

looked up with an imperfect imitation of his cus- 
tomary bright smile. 

“She doesn’t seem up to the pitch,” he said 
carelessly. “In fact we were all sort of talking 
it over when you came along, and we don’t much 
like it. Isa’ll be all right again by fall. But 
she’s got to go away, and we don’t quite see how 
we’re going to get on through this summer with- 
out her.” 

“Just so,” agreed Mr. Burke. “I don’t quite 
see it myself. Why would you be tryin’ to, if I 
might put that to you?” 

“Oh, she has to go,” cried Mark. “We 
wouldn’t think of holding her back, even if we 
could, and of course nobody’d listen to anything 
we said about it. But we’d want her to go, if 
there’s no other way to get her strong. The doc- 
tors all say there is no other way, but that this 
will do it — I mean for her to live right out of 
doors, in some sort of camp fixing, and that then 
this mean spot on her lung will go off where it 
should have stayed in the first place.” 

“Just so. But what has that to do with your 
gettin’ on without her?” Mr. Burke looked 
around him with a bland expression, as one desir- 
ing information. 

Prue was down upon him in an instant. Both 
she and Isabel — Mark, too, for that matter — 

[ 23 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


shared Poppy’s immense admiration for the 
bottle dealer; they all four regarded him as a 
person from whom almost anytliing might be 
expected, best of all, that the unexpected might 
be looked for from him. 

“You’ve thought of something!” Prue shouted, 
much as Sentimental Tommy’s follower, the 
adoring Corp, pounced on Tommy. “What is 
it?” 

“I’ve often thought of something,” said 
Thomas Burke with his twinkle. “Sometimes it’s 
been a thing worth tellin’ about ; more times it’s 
not.” 

“Tell this, quick!” ordered Prue, standing on 
one foot, her other ankle clasped in her hand, 
swinging herself violently around, which was her 
way of indicating intense excitement. 

“Tell! Tell! Tell!” screamed Poppy, danc- 
ing up and down, holding Mr. Burke’s coattail 
and waving it with her motion. 

“Come on! Have you thought of something?” 
cried Mark. 

“Oh, Mr. Burke, please!” implored Isabel 
breathlessly. 

“Well,” began Mr. Burke slowly, as if unwil- 
ling to speak — ^but his eyes laughed, “what’s the 
use of puttin’ things into your heads if they won’t 
[ 24 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

ever be lef go further? ’Tisn’f likely your 
parents would hear to it.” 

“Mr. Burke,” said Isabel, clasping and un- 
clasping her hands, her cheeks burning, her eyes 
big and black, “if you don’t say quick what it is 
I’ll die before your eyes!” 

“It’s sure to be something perfectly grand if 
you think they won’t let us do it. Tell!” 
shrieked Poppy at the top of her shrill voice. 

“Well, it’s like this,” Mr. Burke said. “I do 
be drivin’ around the whole of the entire sum- 
mer. Not a chick nor a child have we; they are 
all gone to heaven and left us. So Ellen Burke 
has no one to hold her at home when I’m ramblin’ 
around the country, drivin’ me old Cork, an’ 
gettin’ together what bottles is to be had, an’ 
sellin’ tins wherever a pan is wanted. Now 
tins is good company. New tins is about the 
brightest, most cheerful companions a man could 
be travelin’ with, let alone the nice tunes they 
rattle off if you don’t keep ’em too strict, give 
’em a bit of freedom to move around in. So I’d 
think a little girl, say about thirteen, and 
especially one with big grey eyes and brown hair 
and a nice, sweet, fine lady way with her, for 
’ninstance, would get well sooner ridin’ round in 
my cart than in any camp, more especially if 
she could have goin’ along with her three nice 

[ 25 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


kids. Say, for ’ninstance, a boy that’s more like 
a wood-sprite than a boy, an’ about, we’ll say, 
fourteen years of age, an’ a nice, plump, sensible 
girl of her own age, who was her best friend, an’ 
a will o’ the wisp of a red-haired little girl, we’ll 
say, for the sake of sayin’ something, about two 
an’ a half years younger than herself. An’ we’ll 
say, for the sake of sayin’ something, as before, 
that the little spark of a red-haired girl had a 
horse whose name sounded cheerful — ^why, we’ll 
call him Hurrah, for the sake of givin’ him a 
name! If she went along, an’ Mrs. Burke went 
along to look after the whole outfit, an’ the whole 
blessed summer we just drove an’ drove, hither 
an’ yon, sort of stoppin’ where ’twas nice, an’ 
takin’ our time to our sellin’, an’ doubhn’ on our 
course, so we could pop in an’ call in Green- 
acres an’ let our famihes know all was well with 
us, it sort of strikes me that would be a good way 
to spend a summer, an’ sorra a spot could stay on 
any lung that went off to this kind of a sanye- 
torious instead of a camp.” 

The children had been uttering queer little 
rapturous notes, jumping up and down, and in 
all sorts of ways reveahng the impatience with 
which they waited to hear the end of this beauti- 
ful program, once they had grasped its import. 
Bunkie leaped about, barking madly; he had 
[ 26 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

caught the excitement in the air and shared it. 
Semper Fidelis, Mark’s big dog, rose, stretching, 
and swung up to thrust his nose into Mark’s hand 
as if imploring to join the expedition. 

‘‘All right, Semp!” cried Mark. “But may 
any of us go? Cracky, wouldn’t it be great?” 

“Come ask! Come ask!” screamed Poppy, 
pulling madly at Mr. Burke’s sleeve. 

“Yes! Oh, yes! Hurry!” cried Isabel. “Ask 
my mother first, because if she won’t let me go 
nobody else can go, because it’s for me. Oh, 
wouldn’t it be perfectly blissgorgeous ! Hurry! 
Ask!” 

The four children started on a run, but slowed 
up for Mr. Burke. He was too stout to run, 
especially through the wood paths. However, 
out of mercy to their impatience, he made his best 
speed, and the big man, the two dogs and the 
four young people, wild with excitement, came 
dashing out of the woods as if they were early 
settlers and the Indians were after them. 


[ 27 ] 


CHAPTER II 


THE CREW OF THE BOTTLE IMP 

OMING out of the woods upon the road the 



children found Cork, Mr. Burke’s reliable 
horse, tethered to a tree, unchecked, browsing 
patiently on whatever was edible and within 
reach. As he was not hungry, but was munching 
much as one eats candy, for entertainment, it did 
not matter that last year’s dried stalks were 
almost all that happened to be within reach. 

The covered wagon to which Cork was har- 
nessed was viewed in a new light by the four 
youngsters, seeing it for the first time as a pos- 
sible headquarters for their summer. 

It was long, was painted blue, and had side 
curtains which could be rolled up, or let down at 
will. It was big enough, if that was all, being 
quite a long-bodied wagon, but that was all that 
was exteriorly to be discovered, though Isabel, 
Prue and Mark scanned it anxiously, with new 
critical observation. Poppy had at once dashed 
to Cork’s head, jerked it up from his browsing, 
and vigorously rubbed his nose, so glad to see him 


[ 28 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


once more that she would not let him continue to 
enjoy anything else but herself. 

“We’ll all get in,” said Mr. Burke, fastening 
Cork’s check rein. “Wemay as well ride as walk, 
not to say it’s better to take Cork and the wagon 
along than to leave ’em for whatever might 
happen ’em.” 

“Queer you haven’t an auto-truck, Mr. 
Burke,” said Prue clambering into the wagon 
after Mark.” I never thought of it before, but 
it’s funny to see a horse and cart.” 

“When a sissin’, fussin’, smellin’ truck can be 
my friend, like Cork here, I’ll have one,” said Mr. 
Burke indignantly. “When it can understand 
me ways as Cork does, I’ll have one. I’m free 
to confess I don’t understand their ways, if it 
comes to a show-down. Crankin’ never feazes 
’em when they’re not minded to start, but Cork 
here goes on for me if I whisper I’d be startin’. 
Come on, now. Corky, boy!” 

To prove the justice of his boast, Thomas 
Burke whispered this suggestion in a hissing, 
loud stage whisper, and Cork, hearing, heeded it, 
immediately beginning to move. 

“I’m s’prised at you, Prue Wayne!” said 
Poppy severely. “Cork’s just like another 
Burke. He’s a real family horse.” 


[ 29 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 

“Oh, gracious, no! Don’t get a truck instead 
of this outfit, Mr. Burke!” cried Mark. 

“I didn’t mean I wouldn’t rather have dear old 
Cork,” Prue defended herself. “I only meant a 
wagon looks something like Noah’s ark going 
along the road now. My mother says there 
weren’t any auto-trucks on the country roads 
when I was born. It makes me feel quite old, for 
they look fearfully old fashioned — I mean horses 
and wagons do.” 

“It suits me to jog along easy, seein’ the small, 
as well as the big things God puts beside the ways 
we travel,” said Mr. Burke. “Why would I be 
behind an engine that wouldn’t let me hear the 
tins playin’ tunes to me, nor me eyes wander off 
the dirt track ahead long enough to notice a small 
bird wid his t’roat swelled out to burstin’, singin’ 
on the slender top of a young tree at sunset? 
No, my ladies and gentleman, Thomas Burke an’ 
Cork in the blue wagon suit fine an’ dandy my 
ideas of what’s the way to get the good of the 
coimtry. And more by token, there’re no end 
of sort of growin’-old women takes pains to 
gather me up bottles, an’ trade wid me who 
wouldn’t bother a hand’s turn did I not have the 
horse and wagon that puts ’em in mind of the 
time when they were kids on a farm, an’ their 
father drove home at night wid just such another 
[ 30 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

blue wagon an’ honest horse. They’ve told me 
that again an’ again. So it’s good for business, 
Cork is, as well as for me personally.” 

‘‘Cork is a darling; it would be fearful to have 
a car instead,” said Isabel. The children had not 
been paying close attention to Mr. Burke’s re- 
marks, except Mark, who dearly liked this sort 
of talk. 

“My mother is out,” Isabel continued as they 
came up to her home. “She had a potted plant 
on the steps to take up to your house, Mark. It’s 
gone, so she has taken it to Motherkins.” 

“Could you go there, Mr. Burke?” suggested 
Prue. “We’ve got to find out whether they’ll let 
us spend the summer the way you said. We 
could ask Isabel’s mother and Mark’s father, 
and Motherkins Hawthorne, all at once, if you 
didn’t mind going on there, and find out quick. 
Then if they all should happen to say yes — 
though it’s ’most too much to hope for! — ^my 
mother wouldn’t say no all by herself.” 

“I’ve no manner of objection to drivin’ back 
to Hawthorne House,” said Mr. Burke. “I’ll 
make the turn around your drive, Isabel, for 
there’s a wheel likely to stick, cuttin’ under when 
I turn short, till I get to a shop to fix it.” 

Accordingly Mr. Burke drove into the Lind- 
say place, made the circle in the rear, and came 

[ 31 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


out again upon the road, headed for Hawthorne 
House. 

“There’s my mother!” cried Prue as they 
passed her home. “I can see her sitting by the 
table letting down a tuck in my white skirt, now 
it’s been washed and shrunk. But there’s no use 
asking her first; better find out what Isabel’s 
mother says; she’s the one the doctors ordered 
to camp out.” 

“You’ve good eyes, Prudence, if you can see 
your mother letting down a tuck! All I can see 
is that she’s over there by the table,” said Mark. 

“I see her by the table, and I know what she 
was going to do this afternoon,” said Prue with 
dignity. 

“There’s more than you, Prudy, who see what 
they expect a person to be doin’, however much 
they may have dropped all notion of doin’ it,” 
said Mr. Burke with a laugh. “Nor is it always 
such a charitable opinion as to be sure it’s a kind- 
ness is gettin’ done!” 

The great Hawthorne house had been at an 
earlier date a fine mansion. It was still a fine 
mansion, but not all of the house was used by 
Mark’s dear little grandmother, who was too 
tiny, and still too young to be regarded as a 
grandmother; to the children she was always 
“Motherkins,” which was Mark’s name for her. 

[ 32 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

Mrs. Hawthorne had home bitter suffering 
without bitterness for many years, during which 
she had not known whether her one son was ahve 
or dead, and she had been desperately poor. 
Then her son had returned to her, bringing with 
him his son, the dear boy, Mark, to enrich her, 
and enough money to establish them all in com- 
fort in the beautiful old home which had been 
lost to Mrs. Hawthorne for so long. It was 
while she was so poor that she was certain of 
neither a roof over her head, nor enough food 
to eat that Mrs. Hawthorne had taken forlorn 
little Poppy Meiggs under her wing, the shabby, 
scrawny, red-haired child whom nobody wanted 
when her father had died and her mother had 
deserted her, and the other pretty Meiggs chil- 
dren had found homes. Mrs. Lindsay and Mrs. 
Wayne beheved that it was because of her good- 
ness to friendless, ill-favored Poppy that Mrs. 
Hawthorne had recovered her son, her home, and 
plenty, not to mention the wonderful boy who 
had been given her to love and to love her, as a 
sort of extra premium of reward. 

The Hawthorne house was so big that all its 
rooms were not needed for three people hving 
quietly. It was a beautiful house, simple and 
dignified. It topped the pretty, sleepy town of 
Greenacres, standing on a height above it, and its 

[ 33 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


old-time flower gardens, restored by Mr. Gilbert 
Hawthorne, Mark’s father, for his mother’s 
pleasure, were the talk of the countryside. 

“Isn’t it lovely, Mark?” cried Isabel, as the 
blue cart mounted toward the fine old place. 
“Once in a while it comes over me how awful it 
would have been if Ichabod Lemuel Rudd hadn’t 
come to tell all he knew about the place being 
really yours, and you had lost it!” 

“I know. I wake up cold sometimes dreaming 
that Ichabod had sworn we didn’t own it, instead 
of that we did, and we had to go away after all,” 
said Mark. 

It had almost happened that the Hawthornes 
had lost their home through the dishonesty of a 
worthless man, and Ichabod Lemuel Rudd had 
come just in time to tell what he alone knew of 
the case, and to save the Ha^vthornes. 

The danger had made the previous simimer an 
exciting time, but it was forever over and done 
with now. 

“I live there!” exclaimed Poppy, proudly, but 
needlessly, since they all knew it. “I’ve been 
thinking! This summer I mean to get to be a 
lady. I mean to have such manners they’ll pretty 
near kill me. I’m going to put it all over every 
one of you, even Isabel. I’m going to be so grand 
’n’ elegant I’ll be Miss Gladys Meiggs, not a 
[ 34 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

Poppy left to pop! So how about this cart?’’ 

Mark steadied his voice carefully, but he was 
red in the face as he asked: “The cart getting 
to be a lady, or popping, or what about it. Lady 
Gladys?” 

“Say, you look out how you kid me!” warned 
the budding fine lady, wrath on her brow and 
fire in her eye. “You might know I mean what 
about riding around all summer in a cart, a blue 
cart and tin pans ? Is it all right if you’re getting 
a polish put on? Though I guess the polish’s up 
to me to put on, wherever I’m at! I’d love like 
ginger to do it — I mean go ’round in the cart — 
but I’m going to be a lady this summer, if it takes 
my head, so there!” 

“Good for you. Pops! I’m not making game 
of you, not really, only a little foohng,” said 
Mark quickly, for he saw that Poppy was in dead 
earnest. 

“I don’t believe the cart would jolt nice man- 
ners off. And, say. Poppy, you might go, you 
know, and practice Enghsh for this one summer. 
That would be a dandy start on polishing. Sort 
of throw out slang as you go along — say, for 
instance, things like ‘up to me,’ and ‘kidding,’ 
don’t you see?” 

“Say, you got one over on me that time all 
right!” cried the would-be princess, and the 

[ 35 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


others shouted, Poppy, her wrath quite gone, 
shouting louder than any one else in joyous 
recognition of the joke on herself. 

Thus they came laughing up to the steps of 
Hawthorne House to find tiny Motherkins out, 
reveling in the warmth of this perfect day, Mrs. 
Lindsay and Mr. Hawthorne with her. 

“Well, well! Here is Burke back again with 
aU our youngsters!” cried Mr. Hawthorne. 
“Are you ready to accept my invitation now, 
Thomas Burke, and spend the night here?” 

“I’m none too sure you’ll have me when I tell 
you — or the kids tell you — ^the projecting I’ve 
been putting out,” said Mr. Burke scratching his 
head dubiously, making the most of his sudden 
fear lest he had been stirring up disturbance by 
a suggestion that might be disapproved, hoping 
thus to dispel objections. “I had a right to have 
spoken to you first about it before I got the chil- 
dren goin’, but prudence is a rare virtue, so ’tis, 
and the Irish are always rash, as is well known.” 

“Away with you, Thomas Burke!” cried Mr. 
Hawthorne laughing. “That is the Irish of the 
story books! There’s no longer headed schemer 
than the real Irishman! What have you been 
suggesting these children to do? What’s afoot?” 

“Sure it’s not afoot at all, and that’s the point 
of it!” Mr. Burke burst into his jolly, noisy 
[ 36 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

laugh. “It’s a camp on wheels I was projectin’. 
Instead of the bonny Isabel goin’ into a camp to 
get rid of the small polka dot she’s got on her 
lung, and leavin’ her friends desolate for the live- 
long summer, I was sayin’ ’twould be fine all 
around for her and the other three cronies to go 
along with me in my wagon. Poppy’s Hurrah 
and the buckboard followin’ after to insure ac- 
commodations, as well as style and dignity, and 
drive the surroimdin’ country over — drivin’ bar- 
gains the while — and maybe drivin’ folks crazy, 
by the same token! We’d be doublin’ on our 
tracks about once in so often — say, for instance, 
every new and full of the moon — and look in on 
Greenacres to see how far you’d all gone on your 
sure highway to ruin for the want of us. ’Deed 
I was thinkin’ we’d have the fine times, and get 
healthy enough to hew tall pines for telephone 
poles, ridin’ around by day and sleepin’ out by 
night, and likely meet with adventures fit for a 
king’s story book! But belike ’twas foolish I 
was to think you’d trust me that far.” Thomas 
Burke broke off with a heavy sigh, and waited 
for an answer with a humility somewhat damaged 
by the twinkle in his watchful blue eyes. 

“Dear me!” gasped Motherkins and Mrs. 
Lindsay together, completely amazed by this 
suggestion. And Mrs. Lindsay added, to gain 

[ 37 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


time in which to see it better before replying: 

“But who would look after the children? All 
sorts of things might happen on the road. Sup- 
pose one of them were ill, or needed mending — 
bones or clothes — what then?” 

“I honor you, Mrs. Lindsay, m’am, for askin’,” 
said Mr. Burke with a deep bow. “It’s like your 
reasonableness not to say no first and find out 
afterward why you said it. Herself — ^that’s my 
wife, Ellen Burke — ^would shut up our house and 
take to the road with us, like Maid Marian who 
followed Robin Hood’s fortunes in the green- 
wood. And though it’s said to be bad manners 
praisin’ what’s your own, I’ve never seen it that 
way, for who could know the worth of a woman 
— or her worthlessness! — like the man who mar-- 
ried her near twenty years back? And I make 
bold to declare there’s no better nurse, nor better 
cook, nor better care-taker, nor better woman, 
take her how you will, than Ellen Burke, wife 
of Thomas Burke, bottle dealer of 906 North 
Street, Hertonsburg, and that no children, who- 
ever they’d be, would want for anything, herself 
lookin’ after ’em. ’Deed, Mrs. Lindsay and Mrs. 
Hawthorne, and Mr. Hawthorne, though I’ve 
less dread of a no from him, I wish you’d con- 
sent to my scheme, for I’ve taken such a notion 
to it that I wonder at myself.” 

[38] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

The four children recognized this as the proper 
moment to plead for themselves. “Motherkins, 
yes, yes, yes! Let us, let us, oh, let us!” cried 
Poppy flinging herself upon httle Mrs. Haw- 
thorne with such tempestuous force that the dear 
little woman staggered. 

“Mother-beloved, I would so love to do this! 
And I should get well! And be out just as much 
as in a camp — more! And it would be such fun, 
delicious fun!” begged Isabel, putting both arms 
around her mother and rubbing her own cheek 
against her mother’s hke an affectionate kitten. 

“Daddy, if you could see it our way I’d hke 
like everything to sign up for the Bottle Imp,” 
added Mark, making up for a boy’s obligation to 
avoid adjectives by the fervor in his voice, and 
the hght in his eyes. 

“Bottle Imp?” repeated his father inquiringly. 

“It’s the wagon’s name,” Prue explained, tak- 
ing up her share of persuasion, though her mother 
was not there to be persuaded. “We’re to play 
she’s a sort of ship, and we’re her crew, and the 
Bottle Imp is to be her name. Please, please, 
dear Mrs. Lindsay and darhng little Motherkins, 
let Isabel and Poppy and Mark go! I know my 
mother won’t even think a word against it if you 
don’t! And we would be almost as good as 

[ 39 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


gypsies, traveling around in a wagon, and Isabel 
would get quite, quite well, and we’d not lose her 
one minute while she was doing it!” 

“Evidently I’m not to mind doing without 
her!” laughed Mrs. Lindsay. “But to be sure, 
Mr. Burke would bring you all home at intervals 
to prove you safe and sound! I suppose I may 
confess that I have not been able to see how I 
could go camping this summer, but if Isabel’s 
health demanded it there was nothing else to be 
done. I can see what wonderful times you four 
would have adventuring through the country in 
this fashion. I don’t know — What do you say 
to the mad notion, Mrs. Hawthorne, Gilbert?” 
Mrs. Lindsay checked herself to ask, turning to 
her friends. 

“I haven’t the faintest objection to it, in fact 
I like it tremendously,” said Mr. Hawthorne. 
“But my child is a mere boy, not to be done up in 
tissue paper, like a girl, not half so precious, eh, 
Mark, lad?” 

He laid one hand on his boy’s shoulder and 
tipped his face upward with the other. There 
was a look in his eyes that left little doubt that 
his boy was as precious to liim as any girl 
could be. 

“I can’t see why it would not be good, Mar- 
garet dear,” said Motherkins slowly. “I am 
[ 40 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


perfectly willing to let Poppy go, and Mark, and 
I would advise Isabel and Prue’s going. I think 
I should have felt it hard at their age if such a 
chance had been snatched from me.” 

A shriek arose that seemed to rattle the 
chimneys of Hawthorne House. It brought 
Ichabod Lemuel Rudd, the queer little dark man 
who devoted himself to the Hawthorne family, 
and Flossie Doolittle, who languidly did its 
housework, out to see what was wrong, and it sent 
Pincushion, Mark’s round gray pet cat, scuttling 
back as she was sauntering forth to join her 
friends, though she should have been used to 
the joyous shrieks these four youngsters often 
uttered. 

‘‘Oh, you peacherino, Mrs. Lindsay!” cried 
Mark. 

“You adorable Motherkins!” screamed Isabel. 

“But I haven’t said yes!” Mrs. Lindsay pro- 
tested as Poppy half choked her. “Isabel, I can’t 
decide it without laying it before your father!” 

“No, of course not,” agreed Isabel happily. 
“But it is decided already by the way you lay it 
before him. What you like for me, he likes. Oh, 
my goodness, I’m glad!” 

“The Crew of the Bottle Imp !” shouted Mark, 
with a gesture that embraced Mr. Burke, Isabel, 
Prue and Poppy. Then, by way of including 

[ 41 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


himself, he stood on his hands and paddled about 
on them, legs straight up in the air, “hurrahing 
with his heels.” 

“It’s honored I am to be your superior officer,” 
said Mr. Burke with a military salute. 

“I’ll deserve your confidence, Mrs. Lindsay 
and Mrs. Hawthorne, and not a boy or girl less 
than I set out with will I return to you, and in 
good health, more betoken, at the end of the sum- 
mer voyage of the Bottle Imp.” 


[ 42 ] 


CHAPTER III 


THE BOTTLE IMP WEIGHS ANCHOR 

W ELL !” gasped Isabel breathlessly. 

“Well!” echoed Prue, and then they 
looked at each other out of dilated eyes, shining 
above flushed cheeks. 

For the unbehevable had happened, the plan 
of camping out that summer had been given up 
and Isabel’s father and mother had consented to 
her going a-gypsying, instead, in that good ship 
(on wheels!), the Bottle Imp, under the com- 
mand of Captain Thomas Burke. 

“Did you ever in all this world think they 
would?” demanded Prue rapturously. 

For, as Prue had foreseen, her mother had 
made no objection to her going where Isabel 
might go. Isabel, the one child left to her mother 
by the cruel disease which had taken all her other 
children from her, dainty, gifted Isabel, was 
guarded as so priceless a one treasure naturally 
would be, and Mrs. Wayne could not hesitate to 
let Prue go voyaging in the Bottle Imp if Mrs. 
Lindsay thought that the trip was safe for Isabel 

[ 43 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


to make. As a matter of course Poppy was to 
go, and Mark’s father could not hold back a boy 
from anything that girls might do. Therefore 
the undivided quartette of friends was going on 
the Bottle Imp. 

“No,” Isabel replied slowly to Prue’s ecstatic 
question. “I didn’t really suppose they would. 
You couldn’t seem to think of its happening, it 
was so lovely. But I couldn’t think of its not 
happening, either. Only imagine giving it up 
after we’d heard of it, and my having to go off 
camping alone ! Gracious ! ’ ’ 

“Gracious!” Prue fervently echoed her again 
and they fell on each other’s neck and danced a 
rapid two-step, pounding each other on the shoul- 
der as a substitute for words which would have 
been too feeble to express their joy. 

“Too bad you haven’t a dog to take, Prue,” 
panted Isabel as they halted. 

“I’ll take Bunkie, and Mark will take Semper 
Fidelis — of course Semp will count for Poppy, 
too — so if you only had a dog there’d be one for 
each of the crew. And Poppy has Hurrah,” she 
added as an afterthought. 

“We’ve just bought a cow; I might take her,” 
suggested Prue, and they both giggled. 

“It wouldn’t be half -bad to lead her along and 
have fresh milk all the time,” laughed Isabel. 

[ 44 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


‘‘Fine milk we'd get from a trotting cow, trot- 
ting all day at the end of a cart ! She might give 
butter, though," said Prue. 

Then Isabel and she feU on each other’s neck 
again, shrieking with laughter. It doesn’t take 
the very funniest fun to call out laughter when 
one is thirteen and at the top-notch of happiness. 

There was a week of intense preparation for 
this queer summer. Clothing, woolen and rain- 
proof, with a wise allowance of thin materials for 
the heat that was sure to be great at times along 
the dusty highways, was the mothers’ first care. 
To the children’s disgust sleeping bags were in- 
sisted upon by the Higher Powers, but protest 
won no farther concession than permission to dis- 
card them for blankets if there were downright 
excessive heat, and if Mrs. Burke considered it 
prudent. Mark reached a decision upon what he 
would take with him for entertainment at the be- 
ginning and never wavered. A bat, two baseballs 
— you never can tell what chance to get into a 
game may arise as you drive through country 
villages — “Ivanhoe" and “The Talisman,’’ his 
craft book that taught how to make almost any- 
thing, from a high explosive to a jigsaw-cut box 
for an elder sister’s jewels, these were Mark’s 
choice of provision for a rainy day. 

Prue and Isabel took three games apiece; a 

[ 45 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


doll apiece which they were dressing for some 
poor child at Christmas, the ‘‘poor child” now 
wholly unknown, but a convenient excuse for the 
delight of dressing a doll which the dignity of 
thirteen years forbade indulging openly, for their 
own sake. 

Isabel took a volume of selected poems which 
she loved, “Little Women” and “Our Mutual 
Friend.” Prue took only the three “Katy Books” 
which had been her mother’s, and which she liked 
too well to risk leaving off reading to try some- 
thing else. They both took the “Tams” which 
they were crocheting for each other, and which 
showed hopeful symptoms of being done in time 
for another winter’s coasting. 

Poppy had a hard time setthng her kit for the 
Bottle Imp ; true to herself she changed her selec- 
tions every day as long as there was time. 

On the last day, the morning of starting, she 
stowed away in the wagon her favorite doll, who 
betrayed in her infirmities what it cost a doll to 
be the favorite daughter of so stormy a mother; 
a small dictionary, “because,” she explained, “she 
meant to keep learning to speak words while she 
was gone” ; a melancholy grayish scarf, supposed 
to be white, which she was knitting for Mother- 
kins ; a box of kewpie dolls of assorted sizes, with 
scraps for their clothing, and a bottle of castor 
[ 46 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

oil, because, as Poppy again explained when the 
other three laughed at it, she “perfickly detested 
it, and she thought she ought to have it along 
when Motherkins let ’em go and she might get 
sick.” 

Thus, on the sixth day of June, early Monday 
morning, so early that Sunday seemed hardly to 
be fully finished, the Bottle Imp was loaded with 
all that was to be taken on the trip — ^had shipped 
her cargo, perhaps would be better said, since the 
wagon was masquerading under a nautical title — 
and all the elders of the departing voyagers’ 
famihes were gathered to see the start. 

Mark, Isabel, Prue and Poppy were fairly 
dancing with excitement. Mrs. Burke sat up on 
the driver’s seat, her pleasant face wreathed in 
smiles as she held the lines, waiting for her hus- 
band to get in to take them, and watched the 
antics of the children below her. 

Bunkie sat beside her, head on one side, ears 
cocked crookedly, tongue out, also alertly watch- 
ing, but perfectly understanding that Isabel 
would soon join him. Calm and responsible, 
Semp sat on the rear of the buckboard which 
waited behind the wagon. Hurrah in its shafts 
browsing while he waited. Hurrah never lost a 
moment in which he might eat. 

“Whatever you do, Mark lad, look well after 

[ 47 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


Semp; I could not spare him,” said Mr. Haw- 
thorne, his hand on the dog’s noble head, pulhng 
his ears. “You won’t get out of Mark’s sight, 
Semp, old chap? Don’t lose yourself!” 

“And, Poppy, do precisely as Mr. and Mrs. 
Burke bid you do, in all things,” warned Mother- 
kins for the unnumbered time. “Remember that 
you are on your honor. Try to be patient and 
obedient, and don’t fail to change your clothes, 
if you get wet.” 

“I have promised, Motherkins,” said Poppy 
with a hint in her manner that she had to strive 
to forgive a doubt of her. “If I meant to be 
bad I’d never have took the castor oil along, 
would I?” 

“Good-by, Prue, dear. Don’t forget to mail 
a postal card, at least, in every post office you 
pass; have you the cards safe?” said Mrs. Wayne. 

“Here, mother,” said Prue, pulling forward a 
shining new leather writing case which she wore 
on a strap slung over her shoulder. “The whole 
hundred are here, but we’ll come to Greenacres 
before that.” 

Her mother understood that she meant before 
the hundred postal cards would be required, and 
kissed Prue over and over as she put her foot on 
the wheel hub and prepared to climb up into the 
wagon. 

[ 48 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

“Oh, my precious little Isabel, I hope I’m do- 
ing right 1” sighed Mrs. Lindsay, as with tears in 
her eyes she kissed the dear child clinging to her. 

At the last moment Isabel reahzed that, de- 
lightful as this expedition was, she had given up 
for it a summer’s camping with her mother, and 
her heart almost failed her. 

“You’ve done exactly right, Margaret; I am 
sure it is exactly right,” interposed Motherkins, 
gently urging Isabel into the wagon. “Oh, 
Poppy!” she gasped, for she had been seized from 
the rear in such a sudden, crushing hug from 
Poppy’s lean, but wiry little arms that her 
breath gave out. 

Then Poppy took a flying leap for the buck- 
board’s step, missed it, fell flat, scraping her bare 
knee, gathered herself up with a wry face, tried 
it again, this time successfully, and picked up 
the lines, jerked Hurrah’s head out of the 
bracken, and seated herself with a wave of her 
left hand, ready to start. Mark joined her in 
his customary place on the rear of the buckboard, 
beside Semp, his feet hanging over. 

Prue and Isabel by this time were in the 
wagon, seated on a board which Mr. Burke had 
fastened into place behind his own higher seat, 
and upon which had been smoothly spread the 
blankets for the night, making it a soft and cozy 

[ 49 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


divan. Bunkie tumbled over to join his Isabel, 
and sat between her and Prue, quivering in every 
muscle and whispering little whines, because he 
did not understand the plan afoot, but knew that 
it was extraordinary. 

“Good-by! Good-by, good-by!” cried every- 
body in the cart and on the ground. 

“Good-by. I can only hope for the best,” 
groaned Flossie Doolittle, wiping an eye on the 
corner of her apron. 

“Good-by. I fetched an old shoe to shy at you. 
Luck’s luck, I guess, whether it’s a wedding or 
not, and old shoes bring weddings luck,” said 
Ichabod Lemuel Budd, moving his queer Httle 
crooked body sidewise, ready for a good swing of 
his right hand holding a rundown shoe that im- 
doubtedly had once been Flossie Doohttle’s. 

“Heave the anchor, my hearties ! Or is it : Up 
with the anchor! ’Deed and I don’t rightly 
know, havin’ never traveled, for ’twas my father, 
so ’twas, that came by sea to this country, leavin’ 
his son to come in by dry land as best he could ! 
Well, whatever the nautical term, it’s off we are! 
So good-by, kind friends, whose children I’m bor- 
rowin’, and may God be good to us all, goin’ and 
cornin’ !” 

So sajdng, Mr. Burke gave Cork the signal to 
start, which he instantly obeyed. The big wagon 
[ 50 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

in front, and the buckboard in the rear, rolled off 
down the street, and Mr. Burke’s throaty, pleas- 
ant baritone came back to the watchers in the 
Lindsay driveway singing: 

“When first I saw sweet Peggy 
’Twas on a market day ; 

In a low-backed car she rode, and sat 
Upon a truss of hay.” 

For a time the marvel of being actually started 
upon a summer of wanderings under these 
strange conditions, which seemed the stranger 
for being no longer a dream, but an accomphshed 
fact, kept the children silent. 

But this could not last long. Poppy, who had 
a truly marvelous voice, began to sing, and then 
to shout as she stood up in the buckboard urg- 
ing on Hurrah after the fashion of a Homan 
charioteer, which was hardly fair, since Hurrah 
could not go any faster than Cork, in the wagon 
ahead, allowed him to travel. 

Then Mark also stood up on the floor of the 
buckboard and raised his beautiful voice in song, 
but his song was not, like Poppy’s, merely a 
safety valve for joy. Catching Mr. Burke’s 
attention, Mark sang: 

“Where do we go from here?” 

[ 51 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


Mr. Burke turned around grinning. 

“It doesn’t matter a tupenny bit where we go 
first, Marcus,, but I was thinking we’d pass 
through East Ilarland about before long, and 
maybe stop there for a little business,” he 
said. “ ’Tany rate, Cork’s got a shoe I want 
fitted on better, lifted a little on the one side, 
and there’s no better blacksmith goin’ than the 
one in East Harland, be where ’twill. Then I 
know the blacksmith will be glad to have my 
missus make tea on his forge fire, and we’ll all 
eat our dinner outside his shop. He’s on the 
river bank, and the stream is kind of dammed 
there, so it makes little falls, and it’s a pretty 
spot. The blacksmith — his name is Leander 
Lamb — he’s had a hard sorrow to bear, and I’m 
sorry for him. I make it my way to drop in on 
him whenever I can, and he takes it as friendly 
as ’tis meant. He’d be greatly pleased if I 
brought four children to see him. He loves chil- 
dren, and it’s worse than havin’ them dead to lose 
them the way he did, set against him and taken 
from him, as his were.” 

“Dear me!” cried Isabel. “How many ways 
there are to be unhappy I I thought it was worst 
of all to lose children by diphtheria, as my darling 
mother did. It will be nice to stop and cheer 
up your sorrowful blacksmith, Mr. Burke. 

[ 52 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


Wouldn’t it be lovely if the Bottle Imp could go 
along showering happiness, like a sort of water- 
ing cart?” 

“We’re agreed,” Mark called from the buck- 
board; he had not heard what Isabel had’ said. 
“Say, Mr. Burke, if the wagon’s the Bottle Imp 
why aren’t we Imp-possibilities?” 

“Mark, what a fearful, frightful joke! It 
isn’t a joke at all, and besides we are not one bit 
impossible ; we are nothing but the crew,” cried 
Isabel. 

“We are true-blue crew,” added Prue. 

“It’s a pretty day, I’m thinkin’,” said Mrs. 
Burke, swinging around toward the children. 
“And is there a way to improve on this shady 
road?” 

“Isn’t it too beautiful!” murmured Isabel. 
“All those shadows! Where is East Harland, 
Mr. Burke?” 

“Right about here, the edge of it; you’d be 
stubbin’ your toe on it if you were walkin’,” said 
Mr. Burke. “Yonder’s the river, and further 
along a piece we’ll come to the Lamb smithy.” 

The road grew lovelier as they advanced into 
the sleepy old village of colonial foundation 
which had ceased to grow almost at the same time 
that it had ceased to be an English colonial vil- 
lage. The children sank into silence as they went 

[ 53 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


along, watching the gleam of the water through 
over-hanging elms. 

The Bottle Imp drew up at a picturesque 
blacksmith shop of the sort that the invasion of 
motor cars has almost destroyed. It was low, 
blackened by time and storms, but it stood in a 
spot of ideal beauty, and beyond it little falls 
from a dam that had once turned a wheel, 
dropped contentedly down to go with the river 
seaward. 

“Leander, Leander Lamb! Say, Leander, 
man!” shouted Mr. Burke. 

No answer came, but the shop door was open; 
the blacksmith must have been there. 

“Step in and look around, Mark, will you?” 
said Mr. Burke. 

Mark jumped off the buckboard and ran 
into the smithy. Instantly he came to the door, 
his face white, and beckoned frantically. 

Mr. Burke leaped down and ran to him. Mrs. 
Burke followed her husband, and the children 
followed her. 

There on the floor lay a small man whom Mr. 
Burke bent over, crying to him to say what was 
the matter. 

“Don’t you see, Tom, he has a letter there?” 
Mrs. Burke murmured. “He’s fainted, the poor 
man! Whist, he’s movin’!” 

[ 54 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

The blacksmith opened his eyes, stared blankly 
up at Mr. Burke, then scrambled to his feet. 

“And you came and found me, Tom! I was 
taken sick,” he said, and hastily hid a letter that 
he held crumpled in his hand. 

“You’re right now? Sure?” asked Mr. Burke 
anxiously. “Good to hear! See, I’ve brought 
four mighty fine children to see you. Sit down 
till I tell you the story of the Bottle Imp and how 
she’s voyagin’.” 

Under this plea he got Leander Lamb to a 
seat and kept him there while he set forth the 
story of the gypsying summer as Thomas Burke 
alone could tell it. When he was through, the 
blacksmith was laughing, and immediately be- 
came upon the best of terms with Isabel, Prue, 
Poppy and Mark. 

He fanned up the fire on his forge with his 
foot-beUows, and soon had it blazing. Where- 
upon Mrs. Burke, as if a forge fire were the most 
natural place in the world to make tea, soon had 
the kettle on, fresh-filled, which Leander brought 
from a closet where he kept supplies for his soli- 
tary dinners, and at that fire it was not long 
till the kettle was singing in the most domestic 
manner. 

Out of the wagon the crew of the Bottle Imp 
brought forth cold meat, cheese, preserves, 

[ 55 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


crackers, cake, milk, sugar, salt and pie, and out 
under the trees, beside the pretty singing little 
falls, they ate the first dinner of their adven- 
turous travels. 

“My, my, my!” said Leander Lamb, eating 
with immense rehsh and with a dog’s look of 
grateful admiration in his eyes as he regarded his 
hosts-and-guests. Then again he murmured : 
“Oh, my, my, my!” 

“Yes, that’s what we all think, Mr. Lamb,” 
cried Mark with a gay laugh. “It’s great!” 

“You came in a good hour, for I was cast 
down,” said the little blacksmith, and, remember- 
ing how he lay on the fioor, the children thought 
that he was. 

“I’d like to talk to you, Tom, afterwards.” 

“Sure! Talk and smoke while the crew cleans 
up. And I, for one, can eat no more,” Mr. Burke 
said, slapping Leander’s knee. “Come along 
with me, man, till I hear to you.” 


[ 56 ] 


CHAPTER IV 


A LAMB ASTRAY 

T he small blacksmith got upon his feet and 
started around his shop, toward the falls. 
Mr. Burke went with him ; it was pleasant to see 
how protectingly the big man laid his arm across 
the thin shoulders of the little man, bending his 
head to hear what Leander Lamb had to say 
to him. 

Mrs. Burke rose up with an ample sigh, shak- 
ing the crumbs of dinner out of her lap. 

“Not always will we be havin’ a fire to heat 
water for our dishes, so we’ll do well to make 
good use of our chance,” she said. “Mark, will 
you fill that tea kettle again — from the well, 
mind, for I misdoubt river water to put on 
dishes ; there’s no tollin’ what it’s met on its way 
to us. I never pumped up a forge bellows to 
quicken a fire, but I have no doubt I’ll make a 
go of it.” 

“Oh, please, please, Mrs. Burke, let me do it!” 
begged Prue. “I wanted to try it fearfully when 
Mr. Lamb did it.” 


[ 57 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“Try away, Prudy, but I’m thinkin’ it takes 
longer legs than yours to work that bellows,” said 
Mrs. Burke. 

She smiled as Prue went at her task with vim 
— and soon left off trying it, with both vim and 
breath gone. 

“Now I’ll have a try myself,” she said, sup- 
planting Prue, who fell back panting against a 
set of wheels which stood against the wall. 

Ellen Burke was tall, a woman of brawn, and 
she worked the big bellows with such vigor that 
almost at once the dull coals in the middle of the 
forge began to glow, the glow spread outward 
till it included the embers around the fire’s edge, 
and in the middle burned in crackling flames. 

Mark’s refilled kettle, brought back dripping 
from the well, was set, sputtering, on the forge 
fire, and Mrs. Burke, with her three girl assist- 
ants, gathered up the dishes of their dinner to 
wash them when the water was heated. 

“Ain’t it dandy here!” cried Poppy, holding 
the plate that contained the remnants of the feast 
at a threatening angle while she looked around 
her admiringly. “I’ll burn these pieces?” 

“Never! Birds, Poppy !” cried Mark. “Throw 
them under the trees. ’Tis pretty fine here. The 
forge and the fire and the falls ” 

“And the firs and the ferns and the fun!” 

[ 58 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

Isabel interrupted him with a laugh. ‘‘Why do 
you love the place with an F, Jack-in-the-Box? 
You seem hke Jack-in-the-Box here, more, even, 
than in our woods, where you were our Jack-in- 
the-Box when we first saw you!” 

Prue regarded Mark consideringly, scanned 
his slender length, his grace, his shining, wood- 
brown eyes, his sensitive, quicksilver face. 

“You do look just like a woods fairy; we al- 
ways said so,” she remarked. “And this black- 
ened, low shop under these trees, and the river, 
and the falls, and the forge, it all seems hke 
being in a Grimms’ fairy tale.” 

“Make it one!” cried Isabel. “Let’s pretend! 
Under this forge there is a lovely princess, en- 
chanted. She did nothing but the greatest 
kindnesses to every one from the very first 
minute that she could understand what people 
said that they wanted. There was a baneful old 
witch-queen in the next kingdom to hers who 
coveted the lovely princess’s realm in order to 
make her own the greatest realm in the land by 
uniting the two. So she put a spell upon the 
lovely princess and imprisoned her helow this 
forge. But, because no one can do great harm to 
a truly loving heart, she could not prevent the 
lovely princess from helping any one who hap- 
pened to come here to seek her help. Of course 

[ 59 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


she could not go out to help any one, nor do any- 
thing that she could not do without being seen, 
but she has power to grant wishes to any one 
who lays a birch twig on the forge fire and makes 
a wish while doing it. Oh, I forgot to say that 
the enchantment was for only five hundred years ; 
that was as long as the wicked witch-queen had 
power to hold her enchanted. But if any one 
happens to come here and wish one certain wish, 
then, instantly, the spell is broken and the lovely 
young princess is free !” 

‘‘Oh, Isabel!” sighed Prue, overwhelmed anew 
with the admiration she always felt for the imag- 
ination of her beloved Isabel. 

“Say, Isa Bell, that’s all right!” cried Mark 
with no less appreciation than Prue’s. “Sure 
we’ll wish! That’s what you meant we were to 
do, wasn’t it?” Poppy stood with her mouth 
open, her dish towel hanging in her hands ; they 
were drying dishes when Isabel began to spin 
her story web, but they had all suspended labor 
to listen to it. 

“Oh, gee!” Poppy exclaimed fervently, mov- 
ing for the first time. “Oh, gee, Isa! I’d like to 
wish the thing that would set her free ; what is it, 
Isa? What’s her name?” 

“Her name,” said Isabel promptly, “is Prin- 
cess Carita, the Beloved. Carita means love, 
[ 60 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


you know, and she was named this because when 
she was born a wise woman told the queen- 
mother that the princess would grow up to love 
everything, birds, beasts and flowers, as well as 
human beings. And the wish that will set her 
free will be one wholly for some one else; it won’t 
be the least bit in the world for the person wish- 
ing it. I’m allowed to tell this because that kind 
of a wish is rather hard to make. Now hurry, 
finish these dishes, and then we’ll gather birch 
twigs and wish when we lay them in the forge fire. 
You know what really makes this fire burn so 
warm is the warm heart of Princess Carita, the 
Beloved, lying below it under the wicked spell.” 

“You’re something of a witch yourself, Isabel 
Lindsay!” declared Mrs. Burke. “As sure as 
I’m standin’ here I’ve been half beheving what 
you’ve been tellin’ us!” 

Isabel held up a warning finger. 

“Not half beheving, Mrs. Burke! You must 
beheve it every word, with all your might, or else 
we may not get our wishes !” 

“One thing sure, I sha’n’t set Princess Carita 
free,” said Prue emphatically. “I shall wish 
you’d get quite well, Isa, and that’s more for me 
than it is for you.” 

“Go on and gather your birch twigs,” said 
Mrs. Burke, when the dishes were all washed and 

[ 61 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


dried. “I’ll pack these things away myself, for 
I know how they do be best fitted. Get your 
charms and make your wishes, for when Tom 
comes around he’ll be ready to start on the road 
again.” 

Isabel, Prue, Poppy and Mark dashed off in 
pursuit of a birch tree. 

“Suppose there isn’t a birch, would anything 
else do?” asked Poppy. 

Isabel waved her hands as if to convey her 
helplessness to alter the law. 

“That is the magic; we have to follow the rule 
laid down in the spell. There must be a birch; 
we have to find one,” she said. 

“Make any difference whether it’s black or 
white birch?” asked Mark, whose eyes, quick to 
see, and trained by his father to note all sorts 
of woodland things, had espied a clump of 
birches, shimmering in the sunshine some little 
distance down the river bank. 

“No,” said Isabel gravely. “Either will do. 
It is the quick little ways of the birch leaves that 
make them the only tree we can wish on.” 

“Come on, then,” cried Mark. “I see a clump 
of black birches. You never find one birch tree, 
or not often. They always get into bunches. I 
suppose that’s because they are so twittery- 
nervous, they don’t like to stand alone.” 

[ 62 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


“Oil, hurry up!” cried Prue impatiently; she 
did not care so much to play fairy fancies as the 
others did. 

The children clambered down over the bank of 
the stream, and Mark bent over to the girls the 
largest of the bright birch trees. Carefully, and 
almost persuading themselves that the choice 
mattered seriously, Isabel, Prue and Poppy each 
picked out a twig for their purpose and broke 
it off. 

Mark climbed up a maple that grew beside the 
birches and reached over to take a small branch 
from the extreme top of the tree. 

“If ‘the top of the mornin’ to you!’ is a good 
wish, as Mr. Burke says it is, then the top of the 
tree ought to be a good thing to wish on,” he ex- 
plained when he had shd down again to his feet. 

The four rushed back to the smithy and pre- 
pared to carry out Isabel’s orders. 

“March three times around the forge — we’ll 
have to Scrooge to get around in the back — and 
nobody must speak. The third time around we 
must put our twigs on the fire, one after the 
other; the first in the line puts the twig on first, 
then each one in turn right after that. And 
nobody must speak aloud, but when we lay our 
twigs on the fire we must each say om* wish to 
ourselves,” Isabel commanded. 


[ 63 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“I brought you a twig, Mrs. Burke,” said 
Poppy, and Mrs, Burke looked grateful. She 
was enough gifted with imagination to like to 
play this game. 

The line formed, Isabel in the lead as the High 
Priestess of these mysteries; then Poppy, Prue, 
Mark and Mrs. Burke, bringing up the rear. 

Five solemn, flushed faces were circling the 
forge when the blacksmith and Thomas Burke 
came back to the shop at the second round of the 
procession. 

‘‘Well, my grandmother Jane!” exclaimed 
Leander Lamb, staring open-mouthed. 

“Holy smoke!” exclaimed Thomas Burke as 
each marcher solenmly laid a birch twig on the 
fire. 

“Ellen Burke, what unholy monkey shines are 
you takin’ part in?” 

“It’s not unholy and ’tain’t monkey shines!” 
cried Poppy dancing over to him, her flaming 
hair wildly tossed, her sharp, elfin face almost as 
red as her hair. 

“Ah, go along, Tom, man !” cried his wife. “It 
does the wisest no harm to shp behind the alma- 
nac and get back to childish wiles, let alone 
the likes of me.” 

“Slip where you will, Nellie Burke, as long as 
you don’t give me the slip,” retorted her hus- 
[ 64 ] 



'^WELL, 


MY GRANDMOTHER JANE !” 


EXCLAIMED LEANDER. 



THE BOTTLE IMP 


band. “And now I'm thinkin’ we'd better aU be 
slippin' back to the wagon — I mean the Bottle 
Imp — and resume our way. Let you and me 
each take a pail of water out to Cork and 
Hurrah, Mark, and go along." 

It was a pleasure to water the grateful horses. 
Poppy insisted on going, too, to let down 
Hurrah's check and see him “put his nose in 
soak," as she called it. 

“All aboard!" called Mr. Burke when each 
horse had drunk a pailful and a half of water, 
and everybody was back in place. 

“Good-by, then, Leander Lamb, and don't be 
frettin' more than you can help. I'U do my best 
for you." 

“And I’ve a strong hope your best will be 
better than another man’s best, Tom," said the 
blacksmith. “All luck to us both, and to your 
sweet load." 

“It’s a queer thing," began Mr. Burke 
thoughtfully after they had driven in silence for 
a quarter of a mile along a road fragrant with 
sweet fern, and bright with mountain laurel, “to 
find a man knocked down and out by sheer sor- 
row, as was Leander Lamb when we came upon 
him to-day.” 

“Sorrow is it?" cried his wife, her voice sharp 
from sympathy. 


[ 65 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“Sorrow,” assented Mr. Burke. “I’m to tell 
you about it, because we’re to hunt for what you 
might call a little Lamb astray.” 

“Is that on account of his name?” inquired 
Prue. 

“Well, yes, that and the age of the lost one, 
wliich isn’t above five years, something less, in 
fact,” said Mr. Burke. “You see, Isabel and 
Prue — Oh, let us have the other two in here with 
us to hear about it; we will tie Hurrah to the 
cart-tail and he’U come along, makin’ no outciy !” 

Isabel laughed; the idea of Hurrah’s making 
an outcry struck her imagination. The arrange- 
ment was effected, and Mr. Burke went on. 
Poppy watching him with eyes himgry with 
curiosity, and Isabel trying to keep Bunkie 
quiet; he had conceived that there might be ad- 
ventures along the roadside. Semp lay in soli- 
tary dignity on the floor of the abandoned 
buckboard. 

“You see, children,” Mr. Burke went back to 
his beginning, “it’s contrary to nature that a 
mother shouldn’t be motherly, and most of ’em 
are, and more than that. But once in a long 
while there’s one turns up that wouldn’t have any 
standin’ as a mother in a congregation of snakes ! 
And that soii is no good in any way. Leander 
Lamb’s wife was that sort, yet while she took no 
[ 66 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


decent care of her children she wouldn’t let him 
look after ’em, as he was anxious to do, bein’ a 
good and lovin’ man, though not what could be 
called altogether a strong one. The wife set his 
children against him, tellin’ ’em all sorts of riga- 
maroles about their father, an’ at last she went 
off, takin’ the three children with her, an’ there 
was no gettin’ one of them back without a long 
law fight, for which Leander had no heart, nor 
no money. He’s been that lonely you wouldn’t 
believe! Now, just to-day, before we came 
along, he got a letter that told him the littlest one 
has been given away by that imnatural mother to 
some one, he doesn’t know who, but whoever ’tis 
they’re livin’ close around here, somewhere. So 
I’m to look for a small, pale child with big brown 
eyes, not yet turned five years old, shy an’ quiet- 
mannered, an’ if I find him — her ” 

Mr. Burke hesitated, looked puzzled, stopped 
speaking and struck his knee hard with the open 
palm of his hand. 

“Blessed if I know whether ’tis a boy or a 
girl I’m to look for, an’ how’ll I tell when I’ve 
found it, not knowin’?” he cried. 

“Oh, Tom, such a omadhaun!” sighed his wife 
with a look half admiring, half impatient. 
“What’s the child’s name? Or did you forget 
to ask that, too?” 


[ 67 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 

“No,” said Mr. Burke with an ashamed laugh. 
“I didn’t have to ask it, for Leander kept calhn’ 
it. Jean he called it, an’ that’s as likely to be a 
boy’s as a girl’s name, an’ the same the other way 
about. How’ll I ever find it, sayin’ it’s here to be 
found? I was to gather up this stray lambkin if 
I discovered it, an’ take it to its father. What’ll 
IdoataU?” 

“You won’t find many children five years old 
with pale faces and brown eyes, named Jean,” 
said Prue, sensibly, but instantly greatly excited, 
as were all three children, by this quest upon 
which they found themselves unexpectedly 
launched in the Bottle Imp. “Take them all and 
carry them back to Mr. Lamb’s smithy and let 
him sort them out.” 

“Will they let you?” demanded Poppy, after 
they had all laughed at Prue’s considerably 
mixed suggestion. 

“Will who let me. Poppy, an’ do what?” asked 
Mr. Burke. 

“Take all the Jean children off in the wagon,” 
said Poppy. 

“ ’Deed, then, I’m fearin’ that there’d be 
trouble gettin’ so much as the one I wanted, if I 
found it!” admitted Mr. Burke. “It’s a puzzle.” 

“Well, I’ll steal it for you,” cried Mark, look- 
ing much pleased with the idea. “W e’re gypsy- 
[ 68 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

ing, anyway, and gypsies always kidnap, at least 
in stories.” 

“It certainly is exciting,” said Isabel. “We 
expected adventures, but think of walking right 
into a big one the first morning!” 

“Does he always faint away? Would he faint 
if we brought him a lot of Jean kids to pick one 
out of ’em?” cried Poppy. 

“Leander’s not well,” Mr. Burke replied with 
that great solemnity of his that always seemed 
to make his eyes twinkle more than usual. “It 
might be a risk. What we’ll do is to take in 
one Jean at a time, first a girl Jean, then a boy 
Jean, an’ tread softly not to scare him, an’ Poppy 
will be fannin’ him the while. But no jokin’, it 
would be a good job done to find his child for 
poor crushed Leander Lamb, an’ the Bottle Imp 
might be proud of her voyage, if ’twas done. El- 
len, do you remember that pretty glen we once 
saw a little farther on this road, the one with old 
revolutionary breastworks thrown up around it, 
much like what they tell of fairy rings in the old 
country, only far bigger, I’m thinkin’ ?” 

“Well I remember it; what about it, Tom?” 
said Mrs. Burke. 

“What do you say to goin’ no farther, but 
spendin’ oiu* first night sleepin’ in the middle of 

[ 69 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


it, an’ dreamin’ of the patriots an’ red coats, may- 
be?” suggested Mr. Burke. 

“No better place,” agreed Mrs. Burke, and the 
children beamed with delight at the suggestion 
of a night spent encircled with revolutionary 
earthworks. 

“We have been on the road only one day — 
paii: of one! — and we haven’t traveled many 
miles, yet look how interesting that smithy was, 
and now breastworks!” Isabel’s voice was awe- 
laden. “It is quite disgraceful not to have known 
what a very, very interesting country it is right 
around Greenacres!” 

“Yes,” chimed in Prue. “It’s just like people 
going to Rome to see St. Peter’s, and never see- 
ing the Statue of Liberty.” 

“You’d be hkely to see it on your way to Rome, 
though, unless you went by land, because you’d 
sail past it going out of New York harbor,” 
laughed Mark. 

“I’m only saying that for instance, Mark,” 
said Prue with a dignified frown. “But the 
Bottle Imp is making us improve our minds.” 


[ 70 ] 


CHAPTER V 


“general ISRAEL PUTNAM’* 

T he Bottle Imp made her moorings in the 
harbor for the night — ^to speak of the 
wagon, as a ship, which the children remembered 
to do about half of the time. The spot which 
Mr. Burke had picked out was a slight natural 
depression between hills of which the neighbor- 
ing militia in the Revolutionary war had taken 
advantage. They had thrown up all around it 
breastworks to shelter them as they defended 
the outlying villages, in case that which did not 
happen should have happened, and the British 
soldiers had come up the river to attack. The 
breastworks had never been used, but it thrilled 
the crew of the Bottle Imp to come to rest amid 
them; it was wonderful to imagine the times in 
which they had been thrown up, to be twentieth 
century children running over the defenses 
laboriously made with pickaxe and shovel in 
1776. 

The glen was a lovely spot, as well as an in- 
teresting one, and now, as the Bottle Imp en- 

[ 71 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


tered it at sunset, was filled with soft tints, 
making lengthening eastward shadows of its 
luxuriant trees. Just over the western edge of 
the breastworks the slenderest of new moons 
showed its clear, narrow curve amid the after- 
glow, resting, apparently, on the top of the 
mounded earth that encircled the glen. 

‘‘Oh, hush!” Isabel said softly, unconsciously 
voicing her feeling that a word would jar on the 
beauty. 

But that was for only a moment. It was not 
long, nor was there time to let it be, till the Bottle 
Imp was making ready for the night. 

Like old and accustomed adventurers, as they 
were, Mr. and Mrs, Burke did not fuss over 
their sleeping accommodations, but tipped up 
the driver’s seat on the wagon, made hinged for 
this purpose, and beneath its space arranged their 
blankets — and their bedroom was ready. 

There was room, or room had been made, at 
the rear end of the cart for Isabel, Prue and 
Poppy to sleep in a row, a narrow row, much 
like three peas in a pod. Bunkie was to sleep at 
their feet, or was if he would stay there. 

Every one who knew him knew that Bunkie 
would creep up as near to Isabel’s face as he 
could get just as soon as he made sure that she 
[ 72 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

was too sound asleep to order him back to his 
own place. 

As they had done once before when this band 
of friends had spent a night out of doors, travel- 
ing with Mr. Burke’s wagon and the buckboard, 
Mr. Burke and Mark turned the buckboard over 
to make it a roof shelter, and beneath it Mark 
was to sleep in his no-longer despised sleeping 
bag, with Semper Fidelis to live up to his name 
and keep him company. 

After the night arrangements were made there 
was a supper as delicious as Mrs. Burke and 
Prue could make it, aided by the fresh river 
breeze to flavor it. Poppy flew around meaning 
to help, and fondly believing that she did help; 
but Poppy’s way of working was rather too much 
like a fly’s way of buzzing up and down a window 
pane to be particularly helpful. 

Isabel and Mark went over and climbed to 
the top of the breastworks to see the last of the 
afterglow colors reflected in the stream. 

“Run right along, both of you ; Isabel and you 
are not the kind to get supper,” Prue said in a 
grown-up tone of competence. 

It was not often that Prue did not feel at a 
disadvantage beside Isabel, but when it came to 
matters like eating and arranging, Prue had 
the best of Isabel, being a most housewifely little 

[ 73 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


soul. It was pleasant once in a while to take the 
lead over her gifted friend. They had reached 
the cake stage of the supper when Prue suddenly 
cried out: 

“Oh, my goodness me!’’ in a tone of utter 
dismay. 

“What’s wrong?” demanded Mark. 

“We never passed one post office, so I forgot 
all about my postal card to mother. And this is 
our first day away, so she’ll be more anxious to 
hear, because she hasn’t got used to it. Oh, my 
goodness me!” sighed Prue. 

“Well, that’s no joke!” cried Mark. “I’ll be 
beheaded if I didn’t forget all about mails and 
writing Daddy and Motherkins !” 

“I didn’t forget,” said Isabel slowly. “I’ve 
been worrying about it, but I didn’t like to say 
anything, bcause we didn’t come to a post office, 
and I hated to bother Mr. Burke.” 

“Nbw see here, my Lady Isabel, none of that!” 
cried Thomas Burke. “How much bother is it 
to go a bit around, when your time’s your own 
an’ you’re not aimin’ to do anything particular 
with it, but go stramivatin’ over the country? 
Don’t you get to thinkin’ you’re not free to speak 
out your wishes! Isn’t the whole party for you, 
anyway? Write your letters, or cards, or what- 
ever ’tis, each of you, an’ I’ll step over to West 
[ 74 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

Harland, an’ mail ’em for you. It’s but a stroll 
of six miles, three there an’ three back, an’ what’s 
that to a healthy man that’s not yet old?” 

“Oh, hut Mr. Burke — ” began Isabel, when 
Mark interrupted her. 

“Captain Burke, of the Bottle Imp, please 
detail me for that service! I’d love the walk; it 
wouldn’t take me more than an hour and a quar- 
ter at the most — and I wouldn’t make it at the 
pace that needs the most! You know nothing 
could happen to me. You tell the way to head 
and I’ll head that way — foot it that way I mean ! 
Say, Mr. Burke, honest, I’d like to go, heaps.” 

“Why, I don’t see why you couldn’t go, 
Mark,” began Mr. Burke slowly, and Mark cut 
him short. 

“Good for you! ’Course you don’t see why! 
Write whatever you want to write, girls, only 
don’t write too much, because it’s nearly eight 
now. I’ll send a card to dad and tell him I’ll 
write to-morrow. Pops, you write Motherkins, 
and come along with me to do it, so we’ll each 
tell something the other doesn’t say ; that way two 
postal cards ought to carry pretty much all that 
there is to tell.” 

Mark started up, all energy, shaking the ink 
down in his fountain pen to be ready when he 
had found the postal cards he had in his case. 

[ 75 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


For ten minutes there was complete silence, 
broken only by Poppy who asked, “if it could 
still be June 6th; it didn’t seem as if it could 
be the day they had started.” 

Mark stuffed the four cards into his jacket 
pocket, whistled Semp, and was off, having first 
listened attentively to the instructions which Mr. 
Burke gave him for finding the West Harland 
post office, and repeating them after him, to 
make sure that he had them right. 

Although they were deeply interested in 
Mark’s safe return, Isabel, Prue and Poppy 
found themselves so sleepy from the motion of 
the wagon and a whole day in the open air that 
they gave up and went to bed without waiting 
to hear how he had fared. 

Mark sped along most joyously, head up, the 
cool evening wind from the river blowing against 
his brow and ruffling his brown hair. 

Semp kept close to his side, being doubtful of 
this whole expedition, and more than doubtful 
about Mark’s separating himself from his com- 
panions, and striking off in the evening, alone, 
across a strange country. 

But Mark went straight to his destination, 
making no false turns, and enjoying immensely 
his walk under the summer stars. 

He found the post office closed, but he slipped 

[ 76 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


the postal cards into the opening made for this 
purpose outside the door, and turned on his heel 
to return, whistling the air of a lovely Schubert 
song which his musical daddy had taught him to 
sing. 

Semp showed relief of mind on turning back, 
and allowed himself to leave Mark’s side for short 
excursions into the growth along the roadside to 
see what it might hide. It was once when he 
missed the dog that Mark, turning around to 
look for him, saw a man. 

He was a queer looking person, his face 
smothered in beard, his eyes hidden by convex 
glasses, so large that they seemed to look almost 
as big as port hole window-glasses. 

‘‘Good evening, youngster,” said the man, 
catching up with Mark. “That’s an odd song 
for a country boy to be whistling.” 

“Is it?” said Mark shortly. 

He felt sure that he had been followed and he 
resented it, besides which he disliked the man’s 
voice, chiefly because it had a foreign sound, and 
almost any American boy instinctively distrusts 
people who are born in some other land. 

“Ah, come now, why be unfriendly?” the man 
said. “Where did you learn that song?” 

“My father taught it to me,” said Mark. 

“A singer?” hinted the man. 


[ 77 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


‘‘No. That is, we sing for fun, the way every- 
body does,” said Mark. 

“Not everybody sings for other people’s fun, 
though,” said the man, and laughed. “That is 
one of the truly fine songs. Live here?” 

“No, I don’t. All right, Semp, all right, old 
man; easy there!” said Mark, for Semp, return- 
ing from his investigations, growled at the 
stranger and began to walk stiffly around him. 

“I fear dogs,” said the man, and dropped back, 
allowing Mark to get so far ahead of him that 
soon he was left out of sight. 

The meeting took all desire to whistle from 
Mark. He went on more rapidly, nervous and 
inclined to be afraid, holding the feeling sternly 
in check. 

He got back to the glen without mishap, nor 
further adventure, passing on the way no one 
more dangerous than a neat looking woman, 
leading a snubby-nosed child, whimpering from 
sleepiness. 

Mark found the Bottle Imp quiet, wrapped in 
darkness. 

“I believe they have all gone to bed!” he 
thought. 

He was not in the least sleepy, and the night 
was growing more enchanting as it went deeper 
into itself, farther from day. 

[ 78 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

Mark decided not to go to bed, but to taste 
the unwonted pleasure of watching the stars from 
the top of Revolutionary breastworks. He 
climbed up the side of the breastworks and be- 
gan to pace the top, arms folded, an imaginary 
tri-cornered hat pulled down over his eyes — ^he 
was bare-headed — striding with military pace, 
making believe that Washington slept in a tent 
represented by the Bottle Imp, and that he, 
Mark, was the sentinel on guard over the Com- 
mander-in-Chief’s rest. 

After a while Isabel wakened, peeped out 
under the curtain beside her and saw the solitary 
figure pacing the top of the mound with military 
tread. 

To her lively imagination it looked at least full 
grown; it never occurred to her that it could be 
Mark. 

She touched Poppy, who was instantly awake, 
and prodded Prue hard till she, also, was awake. 

‘‘S-sh!” warned Isabel in a whisper, glancing 
toward the curtain that separated their end of 
the wagon from the forward end where the 
Burkes slept. “Look!” She lifted the side cur- 
tain and showed Prue and Poppy the figure upon 
the breastworks. 

“0-o-oh!” moaned Prue, instantly terror- 
stricken. “What is it?” 


[ 79 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“Gosh! A ghost!” said Poppy aloud in an 
awful tone. “Israel Putnam!” Isabel was well- 
frightened, but she had to laugh at this. 

“Oh, Pops, why should it be Israel Putnam?” 
she said. 

“Why shouldn’t it?” Poppy answered indig- 
nantly. “It’s a Revolutionary ghost. But I just 
said him ; he come first.” 

“If there ain’t ghosts this ain’t one,” whis- 
pered Prue, her teeth chattering and betraying 
her extreme terror by her English, of which, 
when she was herself. Prudence was careful. 

“What else is it? Sure it’s a ghost. Revolution 
ghost! Marching like that on the Revolution 
place; sure it is! I’m going to get out of here. 
I never could stand ghosts!” Poppy spoke as 
if ghosts had been a frequent experience in her 
short life, and she was preparing to slip out over 
the tail of the wagon, but Isabel held her. 

“I’m terribly frightened,” Isabel admitted, 
“but how can it be — ^that? Why don’t Semp and 
Bunkie growl?” 

“Dogs can’t see ghosts!” said Prue, almost 
scornfully, though this was Isabel. “Cats can; 
Pincushion might see it, if we’d brought her 
along, but dogs can’t.” As they whispered in 
chill fear, the figure, which to them all looked 
tall and unearthly, outlined against the stars, still 
[ 80 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

stalked up and down, down and up, and Isabel, 
like a true descendent of the Highlanders, as 
she was, resolved to brave the worst. She must 
know what she was seeing. Better anything, any 
certainty, than to let that mysterious figure go on 
stalking forever in her memory, not known for 
either man or ghost. 

“I’m going over there,” Isabel said, and 
clutched her clothing. 

“You are notr said Prue, and clutched Isabel. 

“Not on your life!” added Poppy, holding to 
one of Isabel’s ankles. 

“Don’t you know, you crazy thing,” Prue said 
with utmost vigor, “that they just troll you over 
to ’em and then — ” She waved her one free 
hand to end her sentence. 

“If you try to go over there, I’ll yell for the 
Burkes.” 

“Prue, don’t you dare ! I’ve got to go I” Isabel 
said earnestly. “I’m scared green, but I’ve got 
to go! Don’t call the Burkes! Maybe we’re 
the only ones can see it. I don’t know why, but 
if I didn’t go I’d hate myself all the rest of my 
days. Don’t you try to stop me. I’ve got to 
see! Let me alone.” 

Isabel had a force within her that usually con- 
vinced her mates of her right to do what she set 
out to do. 


[ 81 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


Now Prue released her and groaned. 

“Oh, Isa, my dearest,” she sighed, but as one 
who had accepted what had to be borne. 

“Well,” said Poppy, freeing Isa’s ankle, “I 
suppose old Israel Putnam wouldn’t do anything 
to a real American, anyhow. We’re on his side.” 

Isabel rapidly, though with trembling hands, 
drew on her clothes, snatched her raincoat as a 
substitute for her dress, and resolutely went down 
over the wagon wheel. By the light of a lantern 
hung on the side of the axle Prue and Poppy 
saw that her face was blanched, and that her 
eyes were big and dark, shining with a light which 
Poppy whispered “was ’most as awful as a 
ghost.” 

“I ought to go, too, but she wouldn’t let me,” 
groaned stricken Prue. 

Isabel sped straight across the grass toward 
the breastworks, knowing that if she dallied, or 
let herself consider, she could not go on. Bunkie, 
who had hastened after her, frisked and whined 
with pleasure, highly approving her course. 

“It’s so,” thought Isabel. “Dogs can’t see 
them.” 

The marching figure was still clear before her 
eyes, but Bunkie ran toward it, behaved as he 
always did, except that he seemed to be par- 
ticularly pleased. Then suddenly the figure 
[ 82 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

turned toward her, waved its right arm distinctly, 
as if saluting Isabel, and dropped out of sight. 

Bad as it was to watch it, this was worse! 
To have it go out like this, and with a parting 
salute to her! Horrible! 

Isabel’s knees melted under her ; trembling she 
sank in a wretched little heap on the grass and 
hid her face, bowed down in her icy hands. 

Bunkie came back and thrust his sympathetic 
nose between her palms, nobly abstaining from 
the licking which he longed to give her cheek, 
but which he had been taught was ill-mannered. 

“Oh, Bunkie, Bunkie!” moaned Isabel. “Help 
me get back!” 

Bunkie did what he could, but before he could 
encourage Isabel to her feet, Mark came up and 
stooped over her. 

“Isa! Isa Bell, what is it? What’s wrong? 
Were you after me?” he cried. Isabel clutched 
his hands and let herself be drawn up. 

“Mark, where did you come from?” she 
gasped. 

Mark laughed a little shamed laugh. 

“I was enjoying myself, like a ninny,” he 
said, “out there on top of the breastworks, sort 
of making believe, you know; imagining I was 
one of the old fellows back again, guarding the 
Chief, or something — the way you and I always 

[ 83 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


go off.” Isabel stared at him, then she under- 
stood. 

‘'Oh, oh, oh!” she began to laugh hysterically. 
“Israel Putnam! Oh, oh, oh!” 

She told her story to Mark, who shouted rap- 
turously over it. 

“Such a Pops!” he gasped. “If it had been a 
ghost, why would it be Israel Putnam’s ghost? 
You’re a plucky girl, Isa, to come out alone to 
investigate! Let’s go back and get some sleep. 

Semp arose, stretching, from the place where 
he had napped, waiting for Mark to return to 
their buckboard cabin, and girl and boy and dogs 
went contentedly to their quarters, one more 
ghost forever laid. 


[ 84 ] 


CHAPTER VI 


BUSINESS AND PLEASURE 

I SABEL climbed back into the wagon to find 
Prue and Poppy shaking with laughter, 
buried under the blanket to stifie it lest the 
Burkes should be wakened. They had seen Mark 
and Semp come back with Isabel and knew what 
she had found on the breastworks. 

“Well, say! Well, say!” Poppy kept repeat- 
ing, quite unable to comment on the way their 
fright had turned out. 

“I’m not going to say till morning,” Isabel 
whispered. “It must be after ten, and we’re 
all miserable sinners to be awake!” 

The result of this vigil was the natural one 
of over-sleeping in the morning. Mrs. Burke 
had to call the three little girls at half past seven ; 
they were snuggled under their blanket side by 
side, sleeping as tight as dormice, quite uncon- 
scious that the sun was high, though they had 
planned to beat him rising on this first morning 
in the Bottle Imp. 

There were several sheltered spots along the 

[ 85 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


river bank, with sandy beaches and shading 
trees, where bathing was a joy. 

The children had brought bathing suits, and 
Mrs. Burke appointed two natural little tree- 
enclosed bathing houses to the service of the 
little girls, and of Mark. 

“Tom and me had a dip before you found out 
you were alive,” she observed. “Go on now, 
and try how fine it is, but you can’t be too long 
in the water, if we’re to get anywhere to-day, 
which promises to be pretty warm around noon.” 

It was Poppy, of course, who did the most 
daring things in swimming, and it was Mark who 
swam best; Isabel and Prue were good swim- 
mers, but Mark had a variety of strokes, and 
could swim equally well on his side, or back, as 
breasting the water, and could hold his breath 
to swim under water longer than the girls. 

“I’m going up that tree and dive,” announced 
Poppy and made for a slender tree that hung 
over the stream. 

“Poppy, no!” cried Isabel instantly distressed. 

“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” said Prue, 
which was always the wrong way to check Poppy. 

“Well, I wonder if I’ve got to mind you, Prue 
Wayne?” Poppy’s tone implied no doubt that 
she did not have to mind Prue. 

[ 86 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

She went over to the tree and prepared to 
climb it. 

“See here, Pops,” said Mark, following her 
and putting one hand firmly on her shoulder, 
“you really must not try that stunt. You don’t 
know how deep it is, nor what sort of a bottom 
the river has here. You might stick in the mud, 
or you might break your neck, hitting something. 
Come on and swim. Pops, but no high dive, un- 
less you know you’re in clear, deep water.” 

Poppy shook off Mark’s hand impatiently. 

“You might think you was all old women — 
Traid cats! Do you s’pose I’m ’fraid? I’d darst 
— why, I’d darst dive anywherer 

“Well, take it out in knowing you’re not 
afraid,” laughed Mark. “You know we’re not 
cowards, but it’s silly to take a chance like this. 
Rivers around here aren’t deep, and they’re 
usually full of rocks, and tree trunks, and stuff. 
Safety first!” 

“I’m going to, so there!” declared Poppy in 
the grip of her hot temper and wilfulness. 

She began to wriggle up the tree, but Mark 
caught her ankles. 

“Now, Pops, don’t spoil everything!” he im- 
plored. “I can’t let you do it, honest! I can’t, 
because I know the danger. You know I’m not 
trying to stop you for the fun of it. Please be 

[ 87 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


nice, Pops, when we’re having such a good time ! 
You’ll say afterward I was right.” 

But Poppy was kicking and struggling to free 
her ankles, and that is not likely to dispose a 
person to listen to reason. She was getting furi- 
ously angry with Mark for holding her and what 
he said rolled right over her head, from which her 
wet, yet still brilliant hair hung in funny rat 
tails. 

Poppy was a wirey little person, with plenty 
of strength, and when she was angry she was 
more than Mark could master alone. 

“Lend a hand. Isa and Prue; she’s got to 
come down,” Mark said. 

“Let go. Poppy, or you’ll be scratched, pulling 
over the bark,” said Prue, completely disgusted 
with this unnecessary trouble, resolved to have 
Poppy down, whether whole or in pieces, but yet 
desiring to spare her where it might be done. 
Poppy fought hard; Mark had a scratch down 
his cheek in a moment, and Prue and Isabel’s 
hair caught ugly tweaks from nervous little thin 
hands twisted in it. But, of course, she could not 
hold to the tree against three pulling her down, 
and at last she lay on the grass at its foot, kick- 
ing, crying, trying to scold, and failing of words, 
yanking up handfuls of grass and biting them. 

“I’ll — ^I’ll do it yet!” she managed to say. 

[ 88 ] 



GOING TO, SO THERE/’ DECLARED POPPY. 




THE BOTTLE IMP 

“We’d better not leave her till she gets over 
being crazy. Let’s sit on her,” said Prue. 

Isabel was angry, so was Mark, though, in 
spite of his smarting cheek, he could not help 
laughing at the poor little fury, but Prue was 
disgusted to the utmost depths of her soul, which 
was Prue’s way of being angry. In the struggle 
to dislodge Poppy she had lost every bit of tol- 
eration for her. 

“Oh, no, we can’t sit on her; she hasn’t any 
breath left as it is,” said Isabel. 

“Poppy, won’t you be good to us and not spoil 
the fun? You’ve hurt us.” 

“Glad I did! Butinsky!” panted Poppy. 

“Oh, well, we’re all too warm and tired to go 
in swimming again,” sighed Isabel. 

“Let’s go back.” 

“And tell the Burkes to send Gladys Meiggs 
back to Greenacres, and let us go the rest of the 
jtrip in peace, without her,” added Prue. 

Isabel noted that Poppy seemed to be listen- 
ing to this suggestion, that her violent emotions 
ceased for a moment. 

Knowing that Poppy’s temper burned down 
quickly, and was as quickly followed by contri- 
tion as great as her fury had been, and that the 
one way to manage her was to appeal to her 

[ 89 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 

strong and ardent love for them all, Isabel said 
gently: 

“Oh, dear me, no, Prue! You know we 
wouldn’t enjoy one single instant without our 
Poppy! We love her too well to get on without 
her, and she doesn’t always hate us and hurt us ; 
not even often does she scratch and bang us, be- 
cause she knows we love her. I say, let’s go back 
to the Bottle Imp and leave her here. She doesn’t 
want us. Oh, Poppy, why do you hate us when 
we want to keep you safe?” 

Isabel’s voice, always a lovely one, soft and 
thrilling, like a caress, was so moving now that 
Poppy could not hear it and retain her wrath. 

She flung herself over on her face and began to 
shake with sobs. 

Isabel and Mark exchanged eye telegrams, 
saying that now everything was all right; when 
Poppy cried this way, after one of her fits of 
temper, the day was won. 

“I wish — I wish I was ’way down under here, 
with fish worms crawling all over me!” poor 
Poppy moaned, her tense little body heaving. 

“I wisht I was dead and dead! I ought to of 
dived, and broke my horrid red head off. Go 
along back and leave me die! What’jer care if 
I had stuck in the mud at the bottom 
f’rever’n’ever? Oh, oh, oh!” Poppy burrowed 
[ 90 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

deeper and kicked harder. Isabel motioned to 
Prue and Mark to go on and leave her with 
Poppy, who adored Isabel more than any one 
else on earth, unless it were sweet little Mother- 
kins. When they had gone, Isabel, without 
speaking, sat on the grass beside Poppy and drew 
the damp, blazing head into her lap. 

Still silent, she stroked the red hair till Poppy, 
with a swift motion threw up her head, seized 
Isabel around the neck in a violent embrace and 
humbly kissed her ear. 

“Come to breakfast. Poppy dear,” said Isa- 
bel. “It’s all right. Just one more time to begin 
again. You don’t go off half as often as you 
used to. And when we’re really sorry, you know, 
why it’s just as if nothing had happened. Come !” 

“Oh, I’m awful,'" groaned Poppy. “I hit you, 
and I yanked your hair half out!” 

“No, you didn’t!” Isabel laughed. “I’ve just 
as much as ever! But I’m nearly starved, and 
it takes a little while to get dressed. Please come 
along, Pops!” 

“What’ll they say?” whispered Poppy. 

“The Burkes?” asked Isabel, then as Poppy 
nodded, added: 

“You know perfectly well that Prue and Mark 
won’t say a word, and I’m sure I won’t. But I 
do think. Poppy, you ought to tell Mark you’re 

[ 91 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


sorry you fought him, and that you know he was 
right, and tried to take care of you; because 
diving is very dangerous in shallow water, and 
none of us know deep this is.” 

“Yes,” said contrite Poppy meekly, proving 
that her contrition was sincere by her readiness 
to make amends. 

Then she slowly arose, needing Isabel’s help, 
for after one of her outbursts she was always 
exhausted. Together she and Isabel went to 
the grove-like bath house and dressed, the other 
two having preceded them. Then they followed 
Prue and Mark to the Bottle Imp where the 
fragrance of Mrs. Burke’s breakfast announced 
it to them ahead of their arrival, and cheered even 
limp Poppy, into a run. 

“Well, I’m thinking. Crew of the Bottle Imp,” 
began, Mr. Burke, spearing a bit of ham and 
agreeably blind to Poppy’s pallor and sadness, 
and to Mark’s scratched cheek, “I’m thinking that 
I’ll be combining a little business with a great 
deal of pleasure this morning. I’m going out 
after bottles, for all I’ve taken you along, an’ it 
seems more like a picnic than my regular rounds. 
More betoken, I’d not mind selling, or trading 
some of my tins. An’ — still more — ^if we don’t 
go to the houses around an’ about, an’ talk to 
the women folks, sorra a word will we be by way 
[ 92 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

of hearing of Leander Lamb’s little Iamb, Jean, 
which it’s likely is a boy, or else a girl, but never 
a one of us knows which! So by your leave, my 
hearties, we’ll steer the Bottle Imp to a nice, shin- 
ing farmhouse, where there lives Mistress Irene 
Brewer, no less! An’ her name’d mislead you, 
for Irene is to my ears dressy-like, an’ she’s not 
what I’d call a dressy lady. But soon you’ll be 
seeing her.” 

Cork and Hurrah had breakfasted early, and 
now they drank abundantly before setting out, 
and Semp, being minded to walk, took his place 
under the buckboard, in which Mark had joined 
Poppy again in order to seal the compact of 
peace between them. But Bunkie jumped up on 
the seat of the big wagon; being a small dog he 
guarded his dignity as Semper Fidelis was not 
obliged to, and always held himself in the first 
rank. 

The Bottle Imp rolled with the pleasant clank- 
ing sound of its tins to announce its coming, 
through a road that gently rose and fell, winding 
up over low hills, down on their farther side, 
under varied patches of beautiful trees and no 
less beautiful, tangled shrub-growth bordering it. 

“Don’t you want it to go on and on forever? 
It’s such a lovely road, and it is so good to us, 
so shady, sunny, fragrant — evrything! And the 

[ 93 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


birds! IVe seen three I never saw before. I’d 
like to go on and on.” Isabel spoke softly, as if 
the beauty were sacred, as indeed it is, when it 
is unspoiled country beauty. 

“Ah, my lass, no road on earth could go on 
being beautiful forever! Follow it long enough 
and ’twill fail you! It’s just to troll us on to 
beauty that is without end that we’re given these 
sweet spots on the earth, I’m thinkin’,” said 
Mrs. Burke. “But I love you for lovin’ it, sweet 
Isabel, and I’m always thinkin’ how my own lit- 
tle girls play where ’tis far more beautiful, and 
doesn’t end!” 

“Oh, Mrs. Burke! And my mother’s other 
children! Isn’t that lovely!” breathed Isabel, her 
eyes shining. 

The Bottle Imp turned suddenly, without 
warning, from the road, into a private lane, 
grass-grown in the middle, with brown trodden 
ground on the sides where horses had walked 
abreast, and more grass between their track and 
the wheel track. 

It was a densely shaded road; branches of 
trees scraped the top of the wagon, and Mrs. 
Burke laughed when Prue and Isabel, sitting 
under the top and low down, stooped as if they 
might be hit by them. 

They came at the end of the lane to a yellow 
[ 94 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

farmhouse, with white trimming and green 
blinds, marvellously clean and picked up ; its hens 
and cocks, under the lilacs, looked as if they had 
never rumpled their feathers in a dust bath. A 
woman sharing the neatness of the house and 
poultry came out of the side door, upon the broad 
door stone, to see who was coming. 

“Upon my word, it’s Mr. Burke!” she ex- 
claimed, and Mr. Burke cheerfully called to her : 
“Right you are, Mrs. Brewer!” 

“It’s Irene Brewer!” whispered Poppy to 
Mark ; she was feeling quite herself by this time. 

“Well, are you collecting bottles or children? 
Have you turned your wagon into an orphan 
asylum?” demanded Mrs. Brewer, surveying the 
crew of the Bottle Imp and the additional buck- 
board with amazement. 

“I’m collectin’ bottles an’ sellin’ tins, an’ takin’ 
along some friends of mine to see the country. 
More particularly the best farm for miles 
around,” said Thomas Burke with his winning 
smile. “This is Miss Isabel Lindsay, Miss Prue 
Wayne, Miss Poppy Meiggs an’ Master Mark 
Hawthorne, all of Greenacres.” 

“Is this the boy whose father came back to 
Greenacres when everybody thought him dead, 
and saved his mother from poverty, and set her 
up in their old home again? I’ve heard the 

[ 95 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 

story,” said Mrs. Brewer with keen interest. 

“The very same, an’ there couldn’t be a story 
with a happier end to it,” said Mr. Burke. 
“Have you bottles for me?” 

“I have two dozen of one kind, because my 
daughter took to using a patent medicine, and 
laid in a case of it. I wish I could give ’em to 
you full; it did her harm!” said Mrs. Brewer with 
a snap, tightening the shiney leather belt that held 
her black and gray calico gown in at the waist. 
“And I want milk pans, and I need a saucepan, 
I waited for you to turn up ; I don’t mind saying 
I like to trade with you.” 

“ ’Deed an’ I’m honored, m’am,” said Thomas 
Burke with his best bow. “Why should you mind 
sayin’ a kind thing, kindness being the nature 
of lovely ladies? I have milk pans that’ll bring 
cream thick to the top to boast of ’em, an’ a 
saucepan that’s more like a poem than a saucepan! 
I’ll get ’em for you. Let you tell me where the 
bottles might be, an’ I’ll fetch ’em out.” 

“In the cellarway. Dear me, you might be 
excused if you were adopting these four children ; 
I wouldn’t mind keeping them, or some of them, 
myself!” said Mrs. Irene Brewer. 

“All but me!” cried Poppy, instantly conscious 
that her brothers and sisters had found homes 
when they were all deserted and orphaned, but 
[ 96 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

that her lack of good looks had made her un- 
desired, till Motherkins had befriended her. 

“Well, theyTe not for the likes of me,” said 
Thomas Burke. “They’re more than well-off 
and well-loved. But do you think adoptin’ is a 
wise course? Do there be many around here 
takin’ little children who need homes, for in- 
stance?” 

Mr. Burke put his question with great inno- 
cence of manner, and the crew of the Bottle Imp 
listened eagerly for the answer, knowing that Mr. 
Burke was throwing out feelers for Jean Lamb. 

“I don’t know a case of it, except down toward 
Lyteltown. Everybody around here had as many 
children of their own as they cared to look after. 
But I heard old M’am Jarvis had taken a child 
lately. She lives near Lyteltown. If she lived 
at Salem, and that two hundred and fifty years 
ago, she’d be hung for a witch. She’s a witch in 
our meaning of the word, if not theirs! Poor 
child! I’m sorry for a child in her hands,” said 
Mrs. Brewer angrily. 

“Dear me, dear me ! I hate to hear of a child 
in wrong hands!” said Mr. Burke sincerely. “Is 
this a young child, did you say, an’ is it a boy or 
girl?” 

“Yes, it’s young, four or five,” said Mrs. 
Brewer. “I don’t know whether it’s boy or girl. 

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JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


It has one of these names that may be either one — 
Jessie, or Marion, or Frances — I don’t remember 
its name.” 

“Jean is one of those double-barreled names,” 
observed Mr. Burke. 

“And that’s the very one it is!” cried Mrs. 
Brewer, striking her skirt emphatically. 

“Well, the poor thing!” said Mr. Burke. “Let 
us hope ’twill be delivered from the old creature 
that’s not fit for it! In the cellarway those bot- 
tles are, did you say? I’ll fetch ’em up. An’ in 
the meantime, here’s your tins, an’ you be lookin’ 
’em over to see don’t they be fit to cook the king’s 
feast in? Or rise the cream for the baby prin- 
cesses?” 

Mr. Burke loaded the case of empty bottles 
on the wagon, and Mrs. Brewer expressed her 
admiration for the saucepan and milk pans, 
which she bought. 

The Bottle Imp then drove away. After they 
had gone on a short distance in silence, Mr. 
Burke brought the lines down on Cork’s back 
with a slap that made the amazed horse jump. 

“Well, it’s a work of mercy to find the child, an’ 
bring it home to its father, so ’tis !” he cried. “An’ 
it’s helped we are to put it through. Ellen 
Burke, say your prayers for thankfulness, an’ for 
[ 98 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

the good finish of it! WeVe smoked the child 
the first time tryin’, which no one, let him be the 
most hopeful, would have dared look to have 
happen!” 


[ 99 ] 


CHAPTER VII 


THE ISLAND 

T he discovery of a clue, as they hoped it 
might prove to be, to the whereabouts of the 
Lamb child, did not lead as quickly to the dis- 
covery of the child as it seemed to the children 
likely to. 

There were many reasons why the Bottle Imp 
could not go at once to Lytelton. 

One of these reasons was that it could not go 
so far and be in Greenacres again at the end of 
the second week of its voyaging, according to the 
agreement made upon its setting forth. It would 
never do to fail to keep this compact. It was a 
great sacrifice on the part of the crew’s families 
to let the children make the trip ; the least that 
he could do, Mr. Burke felt, was to bring them 
back regularly to let the mothers and fathers see 
for themselves that no ill had befallen them, and 
this was especially true the first of the summer, 
before anxiety had been set at rest by a few 
such returns. 

Now, that first visit of report having been 

[ 100 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

made, the Bottle Imp was on its way again, with 
Lytelton its aim. 

There were no particular adventures for the 
first week of this second setting-out, but, al- 
though adventures were most interesting, yet it 
was pleasant to go jogging along uneventfully, 
watching the changing loveliness of roads and 
sky, even idly watching the wheels roll around, 
fiattening down the ridges of dust in the road and 
scattering it on both sides of the wide tires. 

‘T think I’m getting well, more and more every 
minute!” Isabel said breaking a long silence on 
one of these sweet, sleepy days. 

“It’s all so nice that I can feel it soaking into 
my chest and melting the spot right off my lung. 
I know I’m getting well! And I certainly am 
having a good time!” 

“It wouldn’t be likely to do you much good if 
you didn’t have a good time, I’m thinkin’,” said 
Mrs. Burke. “It do be pretty hard to cure a 
person that’s not content. But it’s gettin’ better 
you are. Ladybird, as I can easy see, and it does 
my eyes good to see it.” 

“Isabel is all right,” Prue said with the certain- 
ty of a whole college of physicians. “Mr. Burke, 
I’ve been thinking: you don’t do much business 
this trip. Don’t you mind if you don’t? Don’t 

[ 101 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 

you — don’t you — ^well, want to make what it 
costs?” 

Mr. Burke slapped his leg in high delight. 

“Prudence,” he said, “it was not for nothin’ 
you got your name I Sure, you’re one to make a 
person believe them who say babies grow up true 
to what you call ’em, an’ so you should be care- 
ful to start ’em right with a good name.” 

“I don’t think I’m like Gladys,” observed 
Poppy, who was riding in the big cart for a while 
for the sake of variety. 

“No more do I,” Mr. Burke agreed with her. 
“But then if you didn’t notice how things turn 
out different from the general rule once in a 
while, you might not notice, either, that there was 
a rule. Prudence is a correct label for Miss 
Wayne, and that’s no lie for me! Well, Prue, 
don’t you be worrying lest we get run into a poor- 
house on the way for lack of funds. Your mother 
an’ Isabel’s, an’ Mark’s father see to it that I’m 
no loser through feedin’ me crew, an’ for the rest 
of it, me an’ Mrs. Ellen, here, own our house 
an’ have enough saved to leave to a charity we’re 
fond of. We don’t need much for ourselves, an’ 
all our little ones being gone where there’s 
nothing lackin’ them, we don’t mind if we don’t 
get together much more than we have already. 
So a bit here an’ there, not to have the whole 
[ 102 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


season with no earnin’, is enough, an’ we like 
goin’ about this way so well that we get out of 
it more worth than money’d be. An’ it’s the 
thoughtful, sensible girl you are at thirteen to 
be considerin’ these things!” 

“Oh, Prue Wayne’s sensible! Motherkins is 
always saying how sensible she is, and why ain’t 
I.” Poppy looked at Prue with a dissatisfied ex- 
pression. She was fond of Prue, and yet she never 
wholly liked her, perhaps, in part, because she 
adored Isabel and Prue was her dearest friend. 
But it was also because Prue had scant patience 
with Poppy’s ups and downs, and treated her 
with a sort of determination to be good to her as 
her duty, not at all like the alF ection that Isabel, 
out of her sweet pity, found easy to give Poppy. 
For Poppy, though she was a little keg of dyna- 
mite, was loyal, unselfish, truthful and devoted, 
and these are qualities noble enough to blot out 
many a defect. 

“Say, Mr. Burke, where are we going now? 
Which way?” Mark’s voice interrupted the finan- 
cial discussion in the big wagon, calling from the 
buckboard. 

“We’re on our way to the island,” Mr. Burke 
called back. “We’re to spend the afternoon 
there, doin’ nothin’ at all with forty horse power, 
an’ sleep there the night.” 


[ 103 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“The island?” “An island?” cried Isabel and 
Poppy together. “How do you get to it?” Poppy 
added. 

“To be honest, we bein’ by ourselves, I don’t 
mind tellin’ you that you can easy reach it drivin’ 
right smack through the river, which isn’t deep 
there.” Mr. Burke spoke in a confidential tone. 
“But once you’re on the island you’d not be- 
lieve yourselves that you got there that way, for 
the water, seen from the island across its top, 
looks as deep as anything! So it’s a most cozy 
an’ castaway island, fit for Crusoe or any one 
with a taste for desert islands.” 

“I like islands,” Poppy said decidedly. “I 
like them. I like water all around them.” 

“Now that’s a good thing, when you come to 
think about it, because most of ’em come that 
way,” said Mr. Burke without a smile. “We 
turn off here to get to our island; yonder’s the 
river.” 

The Bottle Imp turned to the left, into a little- 
travelled road, and Hurrah followed Cork. Mark 
sat reading “The Talisman” for the tenth time 
straight through; he often opened it and read 
here and there, for he never could get enough 
of Richard the Lion-Hearted. The lines hung 
loose in his hand ; there was no necessity to drive 
[ 104 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

Hurrah; he followed Cork with entire safety 
and fidelity. 

Now, as they neared the river, Mark tucked 
his book under him and began to notice where 
he was going. The new road was somewhat 
sandy; evidently centuries ago the river had 
flowed as far afield as this and had left its deposit 
of fine ground gravel behind it. 

Mark noted this ; he was one of the lucky ones, 
gifted by nature with this sort of sight, trained 
by his father to use it. 

Coming at last to the river’s brink by this sandy 
and sunny road, Mr. Burke tightened rein on 
Cork’s bit, and the Bottle Imp descended into 
the water. Cork was wise, careful; the wagon 
went down smoothly, tipping but slightly, and 
scarcely splashing above its hubs. Poppy 
squealed, but that was only because it seemed to 
be a squealing occasion, not because there was 
anything alarming. 

Mark went out on the buckboard shaft to 
Hurrah’s head and let down his check rein. Hur- 
rah stepped gingerly into the water, Mark 
sprang on his back, and thus they forded the 
stream, Hurrah sucking up great drafts of the 
water and enjoying it around his legs. 

It was somewhat of a pull to get the big wagon 
up on the island’s bank, out of the river, but Cork 

[ 105 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


was equal to it, bracing himself against his collar 
with a will, as was the duty of a horse that rarely 
had anything hard asked of him. 

“My! Some island!” cried Mark as Hurrah 
brought him triumphantly to shore. From his 
perch on Hurrah’s high back he could see farther 
than the others, so had a longer view of the island. 

It was truly beautiful, a small hillock amid 
stream, wooded, green, yet rocky, with all sorts 
of tempting nooks and coves on its bank, inviting 
openings higher up between its trees. 

“Oh, wait; let us out!” cried Poppy. 

The girls jumped down from the wagon and 
ran beside Mark on Hurrah, instantly in love 
with this totally uninhabited island. 

“If ever I’m married here’s where I shall 
live!” announced Prue. “I shall make my hus- 
band buy this island and build a dear island 
house right on its top.” 

“Sell us each a lot, quarter the island, Prue,” 
laughed Mark. “It wouldn’t be any fun for you 
to live here without us, only with someone you 
don’t even know now.” 

“It is the loveliest place in all this world!” 
cried Isabel. “I’ve always been dying to be on 
an island. It’s true, what Mr. Burke said: 
You’d never think we came here, driving through 
the river. It’s as cut-off as anjdhing! Oh, 
[ 106 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

mayn’t we call this Bottle Imp Harbor, and keep 
coming back here, Mr. Burke? Oh, he is in 
the wagon; I forgot he couldn’t hear me. Oh, 
let’s each sleep all alone in some nice spot to- 
night and pretend we’re shipwrecked, and 
washed-up, and not a soul saved but us — I mean 
each of us! It’s too beautiful!” 

“That would suit me, Isa Bell,” said Mark. 
“This certainly is a place! Couldn’t we have 
lairs and things, and play dandy here, if we could 
stay here awhile ? And my goodness, it’s a prett}^ 
island! So rounded up and kept together!” 

“It looks hke a nice plum pudding,” said 
Poppy, after which no one attempted further 
praise of it. 

Prue and Poppy were not inclined to accept 
Isabel’s proposal that each one should have a 
separate bit of the island for a lodging, but Isa- 
bel was so anxious for this, and Mark so enthusi- 
astically backed her, that it was so arranged. 
They drew lots for first choice of sleeping places. 
Poppy drew first choice, Mark second, Prue 
tliird, so that Isabel, who most wanted the ar- 
rangement, chose last. This did not matter, how- 
ever, for Poppy and Prue selected places quite 
near to the wagon, in which the Burkes meant 
still to abide; this left the more lonely, distant 
spots to Isabel and Mark, yrho wanted them. 

£ 107 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


Isabel found an entrancing place, beneatli two 
hemlock trees, quite on the other side of the 
island, and Mark picked out another equally sol- 
itary nook, sheltered by a rock and moss-grown. 

“Well, what you want to get ’way off like this 
for, Isabel Lindsay, I don’t see!” said Prue, sur- 
veying her friend’s temporary chamber with dis- 
gust. “Suppose it thunders and Hghtnings? 
Suppose there are animals? Suppose the island 
isn’t uninhabited and a man came around in the 
night to kill you?” 

“ ‘Supposing, supposing your highland lad 
^ihould die,’ ” sang Isabel. “I don’t think any 
of these awful things will happen, but I’d come 
over to the wagon if I heard thunder, and I’d be 
glad to see any animals, and if the man asked 
me to let him kill me I’d be perfectly polite, of 
course, but I’d ask him to excuse me; I’d tell 
him I really couldn’t be killed, because I knew 
my mother would be annoyed about it.” 

“It’s aU right to laugh, Isa, but you ought 
to keep near us,” said Prue. Then they all set 
out to explore the island together, getting more 
infatuated with it at every step. 

Right on the top of the island, which was 
neither more nor less than a hill rising out of the 
river, that night they made a bonfire around 
which the Captain of the Bottle Imp, his first 
[ 108 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

mate, known when he was not voyaging as his 
wife, and the crew, sat telling stories till the hour 
at which curfew would have rung had there been 
a curfew bell on the little island. 

It gave a most shipwrecked sense of reality to 
the crew to sit around this hilltop fire by night, 
a sense of being cut off from the world of fact 
and plunged into the joyous land of Notso, whose 
capital is Pretending. 

Isabel and Mark held rigidly to their deter- 
mination to sleep afar from their comrades of 
the voyage, and went away, each with a blanket 
under the right arm and a pillow under the left 
one, thrilled by the chance of something happen- 
ing to them. Now that it was night, and the 
stars looked down on the dark island, instead of 
the illuminating sun, it seemed less improbable 
that one of the dangers outlined by Prue, or still 
another, might not Im'k waiting for them. 

“Call, Isa, if you want me; I can hear, and I 
waken easily,” said Mark, halting at the point 
where his and Isa’s paths diverged. He had 
come to dislike seeing Isa go off alone in the 
other direction. 

“Oh, I’ll call, but what could I want?” said 
Isabel with a lightness of manner intended to 
hide her dawning doubt of her course. 

“Good night, Jack-in-the-Box! Mind you 

[ 109 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


wake up early for the swim, and if you want 
anything mind you call mer 

“Sure! To shoot a squirrel trying to carry 
me off!” cried Mark. “Good night!” 

Isabel carried a flaslihght. She turned it on 
and followed the slender trail between the trees 
which by daylight she had marked as leading to 
her sleeping place. 

“Well, it is a httle, weeny bit queer!” she 
thought, using a milder term for the feeling the 
place inspired than would have been allowed by 
perfect truth. However, Isabel had the sort of 
high courage that feels fear, but will not yield 
to it. Her sleeping bag, which she had come to 
like as much as she had scorned it when her 
mother had insisted upon it, she spread out, 
ready to shde into it, and she arranged her pil- 
low and blanket, undressed and got into her soft 
flannelette nightgown, the additional protection 
against dampness upon which Mrs. Lindsay had 
insisted for Isabel’s nights out of doors. 

Then she knelt to say her prayers, awed, as 
if she had been in a vast cathedral, by the pro- 
found depths of her solitude under the stars, 
where the familiar prayers of her sheltered child- 
hood took on a meaning that she had never felt 
in them before. 

As she knelt something stumbled over her feet. 

[ 110 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

Not Bunkie, because he was already curled up at 
the foot of her couch, waiting for her. It was 
something far bigger, stronger than Bunkie; it 
was not Semp, besides he would not have left 
Mark. Isabel kept her face hidden in her hands, 
too frightened to move. Then something leaned 
over her and a whisper came. 

‘Tsa, don’t be mad! I couldn’t let you stay 
here all alone!” It was Prue, timid Prue, who 
had come to keep her friend company. 

“Oh, Prue!” gasped Isabel. “You nearly fin- 
ished me! I’m aU right! But I am glad you 
came ; it wasn’t half as nice as I thought it would 
be. How did you ever dare come after me? Did 
you come alone?” 

“Yes, Isa,” said Prue, depositing her own pil- 
low, sleeping bag and blanket beside Isabel’s, 
and, dropping on the hemlock needles fallen and 
dried beneath the trees, beginning to take off her 
shoes. “I was half scared to death coming, but 
the more scared I was the more I knew you 
couldn’t stay off here by yourself. I didn’t want 
Poppy to hear, or she’d have come, too, and I 
didn’t want to bother Mr. and Mrs. Burke, so 
I started. I wasn’t sure I’d find you, but I did! 
It was perfectly fearful coming in the darkness, 
but I was more afraid of letting you stay alone 
than I was of the horrid old black spots under 

[ 111 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


the trees!” Prue shuddered. “I do wish 3^ou 
weren’t so kind of funny about things, Isa, but 
if you weren’t j^ou wouldn’t be you, I suppose. 
Kathie Stevens and Dolly Harding are perfectly 
sensible girls, never go off the way you do, but 
who wants ’em?” 

Isabel laughed at the hint that she was not 
‘‘perfectly sensible,” but she hugged Prue hard. 

“You are a pretty good little Prudjr to suffer 
for me!” she said. “I do think you’re heroic, for 
I know you’re a scarecrow, and it’s not heroic 
not to be born a scarecrow, but it’s very heroic to 
be a scarecrow and not be scared off! I’ll own 
up; it was going to be awfully still out here 
alone! And I just about knew a screech owl 
would screech and make my spine go all up, 
as if it were shirred! So I’m glad you came, 
you dear old Prudence, and let’s go right to sleep, 
for I’m so sleepy I never could say how sleepjM” 

Each in her sleeping bag, on blankets side by 
side, with Bunkie on Isabel’s feet, but beginning 
to edge farther up by cautious degrees, the two 
little girls fell quickly into deep slumber. 

They were soon awakened. 


[ 112 ] 


CHAPTER VIII 


THE INVADER 

I T seemed a long time to Isabel and Prue that 
they lay awake, talking in low tones not to in- 
terrupt the conversation of the two hemlocks un- 
der which they lay, and which were keeping up 
a murmur in the night breeze to which the human 
pair of friends was unconsciously listening while 
they, also, talked. 

In reality they were not waking long, but 
soon were deep asleep, the freshness of the river- 
cooled air blowing over their faces. 

There was no way of knowing what time it 
was when they were wakened by a heavy splash- 
ing in the water and something large scrambhng 
up the bank. 

“Prue!” whispered Isabel. 

“I hear it,” answered Prue. 

“Is it a wild animal?” whispered Isabel. 

“I think they’ve all been tamed around here,” 
said Prue. 

“What can it be? Not a man? It’s too heavy 
for a dog,” Isabel persisted. 


[ 113 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“Might be a cow,” suggested Pme. 

“Why should a cow wade over here from her 
own home? Cows don’t water their own milk 
before the morning milking, do they? Does 
yours?” Isabel tried to laugh, but just then 
Bunkie sat erect, growling deep in his throat in 
the way that always means more than mere ex- 
cited interest. 

Crackhng branches, a footfall on spots bare of 
grass or moss, announced an approach — not a 
dog, not an animal of any sort, unless one were 
to be a modern scientist and class human beings 
as animals. 

“Be asleep! We can’t get away,” said Isa- 
bel, shutting her eyes tight, cold from head to 
foot. 

“Any idiot would know we couldn’t sleep with 
Bunkie going on like that, and I’m shaking so 
he’ll think I have fits in my sleep,” whispered 
Prue in a sort of rage of terror. 

Isabel gave a tiny hysterical laugh, which she 
instantly smothered in her blanket, and then lay 
in frozen stillness, Bunkie fairly raging over her^ 
so that Prue was right in thinking that no one 
could possibly be deceived by their feigned slum- 
ber. 

Steps came nearer, so near that they were 
[ 114 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


now audible, even in the grass, the steps of a 
man, slow and deliberate. 

‘Tt wouldn’t be so bad if he’d rush on us!” 
thought poor Isabel, and, finding the nerve strain 
unbearable, she peeped out through the fingers 
of the trembling hands which she had pressed 
over her eyes. 

She saw a man about medium height, bearded, 
his eyes completely concealed by enormous spec- 
tacle lenses, his thick hair cut short and stand- 
ing erect from his forehead. Altogether a man 
so masked by beard and glasses that one might 
be justified in believing that villainy alone would 
be so concealed. 

“By all that’s wonderful!” the man said aloud, 
gazing down on the little girls in amazement. 
“You beast, you’re right to guard them, but stay 
where you are! Say, my Babes in the Wood, 
how can you sleep with such a dog barking on 
you? I think you sleep not, say? I think I have 
made you sleep as witches do, so that no noise 
can waken you, yes? Come now, open your eyes 
and be honest, as such young girls must be, and 
tell me what you do here by night, on my island?” 
He spoke with a foreign accent that increased 
Isabel and Prue’s death-like fear. His island! 
Was it a robber’s lair? What would he do to 
them for coming to it? How could they escape 

[ 115 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


to warn Mr. Burke to get away before he was 
attacked. Still they lay motionless, hands press- 
ing eyes, bodies quivering uncontrollably, and 
still Bunkie kept up his threatening, deep -throat- 
ed growl. The man did not attempt to come 
close to the side of the children’s couch; had he 
done so, small though he was, the loyal little 
terrier would have seized him and taken whatever 
consequences awaited his courage. 

“Well, well, my poor little girls, you know 
no one could imagine you were sleeping!” said 
the man, and Isabel, catching pity in his voice, 
let her hand drop and openty stared at liim. 
“You are so frightened that I can see how you 
shake under your blankets! I would not harm 
you; I am safe to trust. Hark till I show you!” 
He began to sing in a wonderful voice, a rich, 
highly trained baritone, with a quality so sweet 
that it sounded like hearing an exquisite frag- 
rance, or like looking into the heart of a deep 
red rose, and hearing it, instead of seeing it. 
And he sang in Italian that swinging slumber 
song, Dormi Pure, which Isabel and Prue knew 
quite well, and also knew what it meant. 

Instantly there came upon them both the con- 
viction that no one who sang a song which they 
had so often heard repeated at home by their 
Victrolas could be dangerous. Together they 
[ 116 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


let their hands drop, and gathered the blankets 
tight under their chins, while they stared at the 
stranger with dilated eves, trying by the moon- 
light to make out his features behind the beard 
and glasses, and listening entranced to a voice 
that hundreds nightly in winter paid large sums 
of money to hear. 

The wonderful music woke Mark; he came 
running to discover its source, half prepared to 
find it supernatural. 

He stopped, frightened, marveling, when he 
saw a man standing singing under the trees in 
the moonlight beside Isabel and Prue’s couch. 
And he marveled still more, when at Isabel’s cry 
of: “Oh, Mark!” the man turned, and he saw 
the bearded person who had overtaken him the 
night that he had gone to West Harland to post 
the crew’s first messages home. 

“The boy! The singing boy — no, he was a 
whistling boy!” exclaimed the man, taking a step 
toward Mark with an air of pleasure at meeting 
him again. “Also the dog who loved me not, as 
do I not love dogs! Be so kind as to hold him 
back, my young sir, and assure him of the truth, 
that I am a harmless person ! Thank you ! What 
was it that you whistled so correctly, so pleasing 
to me? The Serenata? The Ave Maria? No! 
Yet it was Schubert?” 


[ 117 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


^'Who Is Sylvia?"" Mark supplied the desired 
name, wondering whether he were not still asleep 
and dreaming the queer things that were hap- 
pening. 

“That it is!” The man beamed his satisfac- 
tion, but quickly added: “What is this? An- 
other one?” 

Isabel, Prue and Mark, the former two no 
longer afraid, but beginning to feel that this 
strange being was an old friend, turned to see 
Poppy coming toward them under the trees, oc- 
casionally lost in shadow, then again showing 
plainly by the little electric searchlight which she 
carried to illumine her path. 

A queer little figure she made in a flannelette 
gown that hung close around her painfully thin 
httle body, and made her look long and ghost- 
hke. Her flaming hair flew around her with the 
effect of a small Briinhilde, surrounded by the 
magic fire. So intense was its color and vitality 
that even in the moonlight it shone. Her feet 
were bare, and her sharp, small face was par- 
ticularly elfin, seen thus. 

“Heard music and it sounded over here — Oh, 
gosh!” Poppy espied the stranger as she spoke 
and promptly sat down in “a cheese,” covering 
her feet, and turning off her searchlight, though 
the moon remained beyond her powers. 

[ 118 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

It did not occur to Poppy to be afraid because, 
by the time that she arrived upon the scene, a 
friendly atmosphere prevailed, although no one 
could have said that it was an ordinary scene. 

“Get up and come imder my blanket. Poppy; 
you’ll take cold out there like that. Don’t be 
silly! Barefoot is nothing!” Prue cried. 

Poppy meekly — and Poppy was not usually 
meek — obeyed. She arose and got under Prue’s 
blanket, but she got under it at Prue’s feet and 
sat erect, with the blanket end huddled around 
her shoulders, staring with great eyes at the 
amazing events before her. 

“She is a young Valkyrie,” laughed the sing- 
ing man. “You are fom very unlike children to 
be in one family.” 

“We are not in one family; we are not related, 
no two of us,” said Mark. “We are gypsying 
together in a wagon, going about.” 

“Not professional artists?” said the man, then 
seeing that Mark looked puzzled, added: “Not 
singers, musicians?” 

“Oh, dear no; just people,” said Mark. 

“You are not so far from right in that hint, 
which you meant not, I am sure: musicians often 
seem hardly to be really quite people!” The 
bearded stranger laughed, yet sighed. “Still will 
you sing for me, I make sure ! Sing the charm- 

[ 119 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


ing Schubert song that you have so well 
whistled.” 

Mark had no small airs of vanity. He had a 
beautiful boy soprano voice and had been taught 
to use it wherever, however, it might give 
pleasure. 

He at once began to sing, and sang the three 
stanzas of the song through with a correctness 
as to key and notes, and a sweetness of tone that 
delighted the stranger. If Mark had known to 
whom he was singing it is likely that even his 
straight-forward modesty might have been a lit- 
tle self-conscious. 

“Indeed I thank you, my dear boy!” said the 
man in a tone that proved he spoke sincerely. 
“You sing by the grace of God, naturally, as* 
the birds sing, and your ear is perfect.” 

“Oh, but it is Poppy who sings! We aU sing; 
Isabel has a sweet voice, but Poppy! Sing, 
Pops!” said Mark. 

“Out here in my nightgown, done up in a 
blanket! I know I’m crazy, or something! Who’s 
awake ? Am I dreaming you, or are you dream- 
ing me? What’ll I sing?” said Poppy all in one 
breath. 

“Sing the Cradle Song, and sing what you 
call: ‘I Dare You,’” said Isabel, before Mark 
could answer. 

[ 120 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

With her sharp face looking whiter than ever 
in the heavy moonlight shadow, and the blanket 
held tight around her shoulders, Poppy began 
to sing a Russian cradle song. She sang it won- 
derfully, giving the pathos of its minor strains 
full expression. And then, when her last, 
crooned note had hardly died away, without mov- 
ing, the queer child burst out into Briinhilde’s 
stirring war cry, and sang it as if she were hurl- 
ing defiance at the lightning. 

“Wish I had a sword and a white horse when 
I sang that!” Poppy said at the end. “Mother- 
kins showed me how she looks, in a picture. Wish 
I had some peanuts!” she instantly added, and 
the bearded man laughed, but nevertheless he 
went over to her and caught Poppy’s flaming 
head between his hands, and kissed her forehead 
reverently. Bunkie, convinced like the children, 
that ever5rthing was all right, made no objection 
to his action. 

“Genius !” the man said. “N ot talent, genius ! 
Wonderful! Little flame-white thing, you have 
a gift!” 

“They call me reddy, and things like that,” 
said Poppy serenely. “I guess I’m not white, 
so’s you’d notice it. You mean I can sing? 
Sure I can sing; so can lots o’ folks, only I can 
sing pretty high, and I kinder hke to sing. When 

[ 121 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


I get old enough so my voice’ll he big and go 
anywhere, I’m going to git up on a high moun- 
tain and sing so the angels will hear and sing 
back, and we’ll keep it going, hke church, when 
the men and boys answer across, singing at the 
two halves of the choir. I’m going to sing so 
the angels will hear me, on a mountain-top, you 
see’f I don’t!” 

‘‘If you use your gift for God’s glory and 
to help souls, angels will hear you, no matter 
how soft you sing, nor in how lowly a spot,” said 
title stranger, and once more he kissed Poppy’s 
head, like a true Latin, unashamed of feeling 
and piety. 

“Now who am I, and what am I doing here? 
You are polite children, for I know you must 
want to ask this. I am a singer myself, and I 
am spending my summer where no one who 
knows me can find me, for I was tired by my 
hard work. So I have this beard and big glasses, 
and no one would see me, the real me, behind 
them, if one who had seen me on the stage came 
upon me. And I found this island, this nice lit- 
tle island, and often I come to it, as to-night, by 
night. And I am tramping this part of your 
pretty country, staying at farmhouses, drinking 
milk — sometimes milking it first — and I am hav- 
[ 122 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

ing as fine a summer as a man could have ! My 
name is Baoul de Nerval.” 

Mark gave a long, low whistle, quite unable 
to speak. Isabel sat up, forgetting that she was 
tied fast in her sleeping bag. 

“Oh, not really!” she cried, clasping her hands. 

“Gosh!” said Poppy fervently. “Oh, gosh! 
WeVe got a record — ^three records of youF’ 

Mr. de Nerval burst out laughing and the 
children, after an awed moment, joined him. 

“I shall, with your permission, call on you 
again, under more ordinary conditions,” said the 
great singer. “By dayhght.” 

“But it isn’t hke being really in bed; it’s just 
a blanket and our sleeping bags,” said Prue. 

Her constant desire to make everything clear 
and straight led Prue often to explain what 
might better be left to others’ perception. 

Isabel pulled her sleeve. 

“It’s all right, Prue, and we have to act as 
though we were at an evening party,” she whis- 
pered. 

“But now you should be asleep, nice children,” 
Mr. de Nerval continued, “so I shall go on my 
way. Little ruddy lark, mayn’t I carry you back 
to the other side of the island, where you were 
evidently sleeping? You are bare-footed.” 

“I’d love if, only I guess I’d be heavy; I’d 

[ 123 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


hate you to strain your voice/’ said Poppy to her 
friends’ surprise, for she was most independent 
and could not endure to be “babyed.” 

Again the famous singer laughed; he had tak- 
en an immense liking to this queer, talented child. 

“You do not look heavy, small, thin elf, and 
I shall not carry you by my vocal cords, but by 
my arm muscles. Come along, then, and tell me 
where to take you.” 

As he spoke, he lifted Poppy, wrapped her 
blanket around her, and set her on his shoulder 
as if she had been but four. 

“Bow that sun-clad head when we pass imder 
low boughs,” he advised. “Good night, very wel- 
come new little friends! I shall see you when 
daylight comes.” 

“Well, talk about adventures! Raoul de Ner- 
val! Everybody talking about his singing, and 
he just walking in on us, the way Ichabod 
Lemuel Rudd goes in and out at home ! I should 
say we were having a trip! We’ll have to write 
half the day to-morrow to tell about this ! Good 
night again; hope you’re sleepy; I’m not,” said 
Mark, departing to his nook, Semp at his heels. 

Isabel and Prue were not sleepy. For a 
while they lay talking over the coming of Raoul 
de Nerval. 

“He stood just there and sang to us! Sang 
[ 124 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

to us^ here in the woods! And he is one of the 
greatest singers in the world, and he sang just 
to uSy in our sleeping bags ! Oh, I wish the sun 
would come up so we’d know we weren’t asleep, 
or seeing things I” sighed Isabel when they were 
both completely talked out. 

Then, because they were completely talked out, 
they fell asleep to dream in a confused way of 
what had happened. When they really were 
asleep and dreaming they had no doubt that 
their dreams were reahties, which is a queer trick 
of the brain when one stops to think it out, that 
makes waking visions seem unreal, and dreams 
seem true* 


[ 125 ] 


CHAPTER IX 


ON THE ROAD TO EYTELTON 

I NSTEAD of waking particularly early the 
following morning, as Isabel and Prue had 
planned to do when they went to sleep, they slept 
later than usual, a pardonable mistake, consider- 
ing their loss of sleep and excitement in the 
night, but trying to them because they wanted 
to be there when Poppy told the Bm’kes about 
Mr. de Nerval. 

“Swim we must,” said Prue with a sort of firm 
regret, “but I say don’t swim long! Just enough 
so we won’t cut it out. Say, Isa, I’d call Mr. 
de Nerval moun — you know! The French 
word for mister, if I could pronounce it. It 
would sound much better for a foreign singer, 
and with that de in his name, but I never can 
say it right!” 

“Well, of course you can’t!” agreed Isabel. 
“I suppose it’s better to say mister, right, than 
m’sieur, wrong; anyway he wears that beard and 
those terrific big glasses, so it isn’t so bad not to 
use a dressy word for him.” 

[ 126 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

'‘Oh, dear, Mark has had his swim and gone 
over to the Bottle Imp ! Now he and Poppy will 
have all the fun of seeing how surprised and de- 
lighted the Burkes are, and we’ll miss it!” 
groaned Prue seeing on their way to the river 
that Mark had already played the Arab, folded, 
if not his tent, his bed, and silently stolen away. 

However she and Isa need not have felt so 
disappointed for, at the same moment. Poppy 
and Mark were deciding honorably to wait tiD 
the other two had come, before unfolding the 
wonder-tale. 

Nor need they have minded if it had been told! 
When they came running up to the breakfast 
room, which was the grass alongside of the wag- 
on, and took their part in the great story, Mr. 
Burke heard it with a stohdity that betrayed, not 
merely that it did not interest him, but that it 
somewhat annoyed him. Mrs. Burke paused in 
her task of shcing bacon, and listened with ex- 
treme disapproval. 

“Now would you harken to that!” she ex- 
claimed angrily. “That settles your going off 
to sleep by yourselves, let it be on an island, or 
wherever, and let it be beside a river, or in mid- 
ocean! To think of a man stravaging through 
the water by night, and coming upon you inno- 

[ 127 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 

cent children sleeping! Suppose he’d have killed 
you?” 

“But it wasn’t a man; it was a famous singer, 
and he sang for us, just for us! And Mark and 
Poppy sang for him, and he said Poppy had 
genius. Think of it; he said just that!” cried 
Prue, bewildered by this reception. 

“Well, then, my missus is right,” Thomas 
Burke said. “What’s a singer, famous or not? 
An’ more by token, a foreign one! We do be 
getting too many foreigners in America. I mis- 
doubt there’s a ha’penny tu’penny’s worth of 
dijSference between the one with a voice to sing, 
an’ the one with a hurdygurdy to grind, barrin’ 
the pay they get, an’ that’s not a difference in 
the man, but in the music. No, no; I don’t half 
like it, but we’re movin’ back to the road to- 
day, an’ we’ll leave him his island to himself.” 

Isabel, Prue, Poppy and Mark got together 
alone, and consulted as to this unexpected way 
of receiving their important news. 

“Well, of course,” Mark said at last, frying 
fo be fair and reasonable, “Mr. Burke’s an all- 
round peacherino, but he doesn’t know these 
things.” 

Mark was seeking for a way fo express deli- 
cately that their friend lacked somewhat of cul- 
[ 128 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


livation, had not a full realization of what if 
meant to be a great artist. 

“The main thing is to meet Mr. de Nerral, and 
not let him get to the Bottle Imp, because, on 
the other hand, he’d never understand Mr. Burke, 
if he wasn’t quite nice to him, and of course he 
wouldn’t be if he looks at it like this.” 

“And most likely Mr. de Nerval sings every 
night in winter with roses piled up around his 
knees, he gets so many thrown at him,” sighed 
Prue, letting her imagination paint a tragic con- 
trast to the picture of the great artist, snubbed, 
when he came to the Bottle Imp. 

But even as the crew debated how to act, 
Baoul de Nerval, whose energy would have done 
credit to a laborer, came toward the Bottle Imp. 

Catching sight of the children he broke into a 
cascade of song, all runs and rippling trills and 
happy cadences. Though the words he sang 
were but “Good morning, good morning,” over 
and over, it was a song of rare beauty. 

It brought Mr. and Mrs. Burke out from mak- 
ing the wagon ready for the day, and it bore 
away their prejudice as if it really were the cas- 
cade it sounded like, washing away all barriers 
against the singer. 

“Saints in heaven, but he can sing!” muttered 
Mr. Burke, and returned the salute that Mr. de 

[ 129 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


Nerval made him, with a sense of shame that he 
had mistrusted so marvelous an artist. 

The children had said nothing to the singer of 
whom they were with, nor how they were travel- 
ing. Isabel and Mark suddenly became con- 
scious that the Bottle Imp might strike Raoul de 
Nerval as somewhat curious; they were a httle 
uneasy about this, as well as about his reception, 
now that he was here. 

They could not know that an artist, who was 
also partly French and partly Italian, would 
never fail in understanding. 

Raoul de Nerval grasped the situation at once 
at only the barest suggestion that Isabel had 
been ill, ordered to spend the summer out of 
doors, and that the bottle dealer had taken her, 
with her comrades, to drive about with him all 
summer, “combinin’ business with pleasure,” as 
he himself said. 

While Mr. Burke smoked his pipe, Mr. de 
Nerval sociably smoked cigarettes; his long, 
flexible fingers had a fascination for the children 
as he rolled and lighted cigarettes, which seemed 
to disappear in smoke very fast. 

In a short time he was singing Irish songs, to 
the boundless delight of Mr. and Mrs. Burke, 
and singing them as if he had never heard any 
other music, though he followed them with 
[ 130 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

French songs, ballads of Naples, and the lovely 
Scotch songs, and sang them all as if each were 
the songs of his native land. Then he had the 
four children singing for him, unafraid, then each 
one alone, last of all Poppy, whom he put thi’ough 
almost her entire list. 

“Ah, yes, little enfante rouge,” he said rising 
to go. “You have it all, ear, temperament, voice, 
imderstanding! You may one day be a famous 
artiste, small Poppy ! It is not the name for you ; 
poppies make to sleep. You are most awakening. 
I see that it would not be useful to talk to you, 
Mr. Burke, of this child’s future. I did not 
know that she was not here with her guardians. 
Mr. Gilbert Hawthorne, of Greenacres, is your 
father, you say, mon fils? And your Poppy has 
no roots? She is but under your protection? I 
shall, with your father’s permission, come to see 
him before this wander-summer is over. With 
him I will talk of Poppy, and what she may do. 
I thank you for your hospitality, and for your 
singing. Seldom does one meet such dear chil- 
dren as I have found here, on my little island. 
May I kiss your cheek in parting, Isabel and 
Prue? And Mark, we, in France, do not think 
it unworthy our manly dignity to receive and 
bestow a kiss? 

He kissed each fresh, firm young cheek wdth 

[ 131 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


evident affection for the three children, and 
Poppy he kissed on both cheeks, and held tight 
her thin hands. 

“Poor little red lark!’’ he said. “It is a great 
gift that was given you, but you will find it costs, 
my dear, it surely costs!” 

With which Raoul de NTerval went away, leav- 
ing behind him echoes in memory of his wonder- 
ful singing, and golden opinions of himself, not 
only in the children’s minds, but no less in the 
minds of Mr. and Mrs. Burke. 

“Well, this will turn no wheels for us, crew 
of the Bottle Imp!” said Thomas Burke rising 
with a heavy sigh. “It’s long past time that we 
should be on our way ! It’s my intention to get 
to Lytelton sometime to look for that child we 
heard of from Mistress Irene Brewer, an’ if we 
don’t hit a better pace than we’ve been makin’, 
sure I’m thinkin’ the frosts will get us before 
we get poor Leander Lamb’s boy — or maybe 
girl! So pile in, all of you, an’ Mark, you’d 
better take the buckboard through the river, for 
though Hurrah’ll follow Cork all right, it might 
be he’d need easin’ up over the bank, an’ if he 
tipped any one over, ’twould be you could stand 
it better than Poppy.” 

“I can’t bear to leave the island!” sighed Isa- 
[ 132 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


bel. ‘Tt’s my very first island, and IVe always 
wanted one dreadfully.” 

“And it’s a beauty little island!” added Mark. 
“But never mind, Isa; Prue’s going to buy it, 
and settle on it, and divide it with all of us, so 
we’re to return.” 

“I said if I married I’d live here,” said Prue 
stiffly. “I think it’s more’n likely I shall be a 
doctor, and never marry.” 

“Buy it anyhow, for a sanitarium, and let us 
be patients!” cried Mark. 

The Bottle Imp went up on two wheels going 
down the river bank, but it righted itself, and 
was none the worse for having shaken up its 
passengers. 

The buckboard seemed to entertain a thought 
of doubling itself up in the middle as it dropped 
down, somewhat too quickly, but it, too, brought 
itself on the level, and after this the fording the 
shallow water was, as Mr. Burke truly said: 
“No trick at all.” 

“There are two ways to Lytelton from here,” 
observed Mr. Burke, “an’ I don’t see that j^ou 
gain or lose, whichever you take, so Isabel, since 
this party is for you, tell me now will I turn, 
left or right, at that fork in the roads, yonder?” 

“Mercy, w^hen I don’t know a thing about 
either of them, how can I choose?” cried Isabel. 

[ 133 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


‘T’m tellin’ you it makes no difference, but 
for the sake of playin’ the game, choose you one 
of ’em. There’s never any sayin’ what may be 
anywhere where we’re not lookin’ for it, an’ it s 
good to leave matters to some one to pick,” said 
Mr. Burke; neither the children nor he knew 
whether there were meaning, or not, behind his 
mysterious sounding words. 

“All right, if I must! Take the left,” said 
Isabel, and left it was. 

It proved to be a wise choice, as far as smooth- 
ness of road and pretty ghmpses of scenery went. 
Mr. Burke stopped at some of the frame houses 
which occurred at intervals, and in all but one 
gathered a contribution of empty bottles, and 
in three of them sold tins. 

“There’s been a run on saucepans,” he re- 
marked, surveying his stock with a practiced 
eye after his last sale, when he returned to his 
wagon. “You might say all the housewives had 
been leavin’ their saucepans go dry an’ bum on 
’em, the way they’re after new ones! Well, bless 
their hearts, they’ve got votes; why shouldn’t 
they get saucepans? Here’s a house, now, that 
I’m goin’ into, yet something tells me ’tis no wel - 
come I’ll be gettin’. Mark the shades tight 
drawn! Fear of sunlight’s a poor thing in any 
creature made to live by it, like us humans. 

[ 134 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

Come in with me, Isabel an’ Mark; I’m timid!” 

He winked at his crew to comment on his 
brand of timidity, and Isabel and Mark, in high 
glee, came down, and followed him up to the 
door. 

A sallow woman, tight drawn as to hair and 
features, opened it a little way in response to 
Mr. Burke’s knock. 

“Bottles? No, I hain’t, hain’t got any. We 
don’t use medicines to our house, and I’m a pro- 
hibitioner, and my man’s given up takin’ Jamaica 
Ginger all the time, like he uster. We use a 
tonic, but there hain’t any bottles empty of it. 
Go along; I hain’t time to stop this mornin’,” she 
said in a high, rapid-firing voice. 

“Well, weU! You women who keep your 
house the way I see this one’s kept” — ^the door 
was open only about five inches, and Mr. Burke 
gave Isabel a comical glance as he spoke — “you 
don’t get the time you’ve a perfect right to. Bot- 
tles I collect for my own benefit, an’ to get ’em 
out of the way. But tins I Ah, tins now, those I 
selir 

Mr. Burke threw into his voice an impressive 
note, as if this were almost the last thing any 
one but he would have thought of doing with 
tins. 


[ 135 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“Tins I don’t want, nor need; got enough,” 
the woman snapped. 

Just then a child, a dull, sickly little girl of 
four or five, came and thrust her head out of the 
door, below the woman’s hand holding it open, 
pushing it farther ajar to do so. 

“I’ve alphabet plates for the little ones!” cried 
Mr. Burke triumphantly. “The very tiling for 
this little one to learn off of, while she eats, an’ 
no trouble to her to learn, nor you to teach her, 
and she’ll start school a whole year nearer her 
graduation from it, for this help toward her 
education. Mugs, too, I’m carryin’; everything 
you could ask for, in fact.” 

“Don’t remember asking for anything,” 
snarled the woman. “Get along in there, Jean. 
I’m going to shut the door, and let everybody 
tend to their own business, same’s I do.” 

Isabel and Mark had started and looked 
quickly at each other as they heard the child’s 
name. She was just such a forlorn-looking mite 
as one would expect to find the unfortunate 
Lamb child to be. 

Mr. Burke betrayed no interest, except that 
his eyes flashed, and then their lids fell. He 
shot a look at Isabel, as if to beg her to prolong 
the conversation somehow. 

“I’m riding with the bottle man, Jeanie,” Isa- 
[ 136 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

bel said. ‘T have my little dog with me. 
Wouldn’t you like to see him? He’s a raggedy 
little dog, and his name is Bunkie, short for 
Bunker, because I got him on Bunker Hill day, 
once upon a time.” Isabel had no idea what 
she was trying to do with the child, but she un- 
derstood Mr. Burke’s glance, and tried to obey 
it. 

‘‘She doesn’t look well, not a bit like you. I’m 
not well, myself, or I wasn’t.” 

Isabel smiled up into the woman’s face with 
the smile that almost always won for her what 
she wanted. 

“See here, little girl, Jean ain’t going to see 
your dog, nor no other dog! And I’d thank you 
to not be meddling with her. She’s well enough ; 
a poor sort of young one, same’s her mother. 
She ain’t my child. Here, didn’t I teU you to 
go back in?” 

The woman swung the child around roughly 
by the shoulder, though she did not hurt her, 
and shut the door with a slam. 

Mr. Burke took Isabel’s hand, and went out 
to the wagon without speaking. They chmbed 
in, Mark after them; Poppy was again driving 
her own buckboard in solitary state. 

“No one can ever tell; didn’t I say so?” Mr. 
Burke said solemnly. “Is it any wonder you 

[ 137 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 

chose the left-hand road? There do be wonder- 
ful things happen, we don’t know how.” 

“Do you suppose that is the Lamb Jean?” 
asked Isabel, awe-struck by the idea that her 
choice of road might have brought about this 
discovery. 

“I do that!” declared Mr. Burke impressively. 

Mrs. Burke and Prue demanded to be told 
what they meant, and they were as sure as Mr. 
Burke was, that the small stray lambkin was 
found. ^ 

“Whatever will you be doin’ to get her, Tom 
darlin’?” asked Mrs. Burke, aU excited longing 
to rescue the child. 

“That’s what must be decided. I believe my 
best course would be to keep on to Lytelton. 
We’d be there for Sunday, anjrways, an’ it’s a 
good place to be that day. Then I’ve a lawyer 
friend there — he’s me mother’s cousin’s son, so 
would be glad to do his best for me — an’ him 
I’ll consult as to proceedin’s. I don’t know what 
claim to title that woman may be settin’ up, but 
well we know she has no claim she can prove 
against a livin’ father’s claim. The poor little 
creature looked pale and frightened, as well she 
may in the clutches of that human mangle 1 I’m 
thinkin’ ’twould be a pretty child, let her be fed 
[138] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


up, an’ let play as a young lamb — whether ’tis a 
lamb by name or nature! — should do.” 

Good Mr. Burke was profoundly stirred by the 
hope that he might play the part of guardian 
angel to the sad little Jean, albeit a queer angel, 
in loose blue serge, driving his wagon and col- 
lecting bottles. But angels, which after all 
means God’s messengers, appear under odd 
guises. 

“I think,” said Isabel most slowly and impres- 
sively, and as if she had not said the same thing 
countless times, “I think that we are having a 
perfectly wonderful voyage, in this splendid Bot- 
tle Imp!” 


[1S9] 


CHAPTER X 


LYTELTON AT EAST I 

N OW, with their destination almost attained, 
and stronger reasons for wanting to reach 
it, the Bottle Imp crowded on all sail and made 
her greater number of knots an hour to get there. 
That would be the way to put it if one were, as 
the children were, remembering to make believe 
the wagon was a ship, but if one’s imagination 
were not equal to seeing it as anything but a 
wagon, then one would say less impressively, but 
more truly, that Mr. Burke urged Cork to do 
his best to get rapidly over the miles that lay 
between the house where the little girl, Jean, 
was, and Lytelton. 

Cork could travel well if he were so minded, 
and now he did so. Saturday afternoon he 
brought the big wagon into Lytelton, and Hur- 
rah came after him with the buckboard, in friend- 
ly, but ambitious, rivalry. 

Lytelton was a pretty little city; the children 
were surprised to find it decidedly larger than 
Greenacres. They had an undefined feeling that, 
[ 140 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

while the big cities — New York, Boston, Phila- 
delphia — ^were larger than Greenacres, any less 
well-known place would be likely to be smaller, 
just because Greenacres was Greenacres I 

There was a business district that extended 
along the river while it remained a wholesale busi- 
ness district, but it went on up, near the houses, 
and there it became a retail shopping district. 
There were streets and streets of comfortable 
houses, schools, cinema theatres, a hospital or 
two, many churches, altogether everything re- 
quired to set up in life a sizeable city. 

“We can’t sleep in the wagon, nor under the 
buckboard to-night, I’m thinkin’,” said Mr. 
Burke. “I’m takin’ you to a cozy little hotel I 
know, kept by Johnny O’Bourke, who’s a friend 
of mine, an’ kept neat an’ decent. Then I’m go- 
in’ to hunt up my light-o’-the-law, Jim Hay, 
an’ find out what’s best done to get that sickly, 
pinched little Jean away from the human mangle, 
an’ back to her father. ’Deed my heart aches for 
the child, an’ I keep seein’ her!” 

“’Deed and so do I, Tom dear,” sighed Mrs. 
Burke. “Had she no father, I’d beg you to let 
me try to get her for ourselves.” 

“That like you, Ellen,” said her husband ad- 
miringly. “’Twould be a lucky thing for 
her, I’m thinkin’! Look after the crew. First 

[ 141 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


Mate, for I’m goin’ to take you in here, an’ be off 
myself to find Hay.” 

He drove into the stableyard of a small inn, 
engaged a large room, with three single beds 
for the three girls, and a small room, with one 
bed for the boy, and a third room for himself 
and his wife, hastily gave his wife a resounding 
kiss, and hurried off to discover his legal friend. 

The Take-Your-Ease was the remarkable 
name of the small house to which Thomas Burke 
had brought his crew. It was a queer little 
place, entirely clean, not in the least pretty, but 
decidedly attractive. Its furniture was old-fash- 
ioned, good and comfortable ; it was hung gener- 
ously with old-time bright-colored prints, repre- 
senting high-hatted men, with wasp-like waists, 
high pointed collars, moustaches and empty 
smiles, escorting, or chatting with ladies who 
wore curls and drooping hats, lace shawls and 
an air of frail elegance, and who seemed afraid 
to lift their large eyes to reply to the gentlemen, 
who certainly did not look alarming. “Johnny 
O’Rourke,” who had taken over the hotel as it 
stood, respected these pictures too profoundly 
ever to disturb one of them, so they adorned all 
the walls of the Take-Your-Ease, and Isabel and 
Prue and Poppy, Mark no less, found them fas- 
cinating. They fell to making up conversation 
[ 142 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

between these elegant people, and to telling 
stories about them, till they got themselves into 
gales of laughter. Thus they found the time 
too short, till Mr. Burke returned. 

“You wouldn’t think we’d be able to stand 
staying here after the lovely way we’ve been 
spending our nights, but honestly, it’s lots of fun 
to be here !” said Prue wondering at the fact. 

“I’ve never stayed at a hotel before,” remarked 
Poppy. “I think it’s great, an’ I do wish you’d 
let me give orders at the table, Mrs. Burke.” 

“Bless yoiu* heart, all you want to! If ever 
you get to be a singer, as Mr. de Nervey, or 
whatever you call him, said you would, you’ll 
have plenty chance to order, most like over in 
Europe,” said Mrs. Burke with a laugh. 

Mr. Burke came whistling in, and threw his 
hat on the table of the small reception room in 
which he discovered the crew of the Bottle Imp. 

“Found Hay,” he announced needlessly, for 
he showed that he had good news. “He said I 
could take the child, if I had power to act for 
Leander from himself. So we got him on long 
distance, an’ he telegraphed what Jim told him 
to say, an’ had it sworn to by a justice at East 
Harland, who sort of witnessed the telegram. 
An’ Monday morning we’ll get an officer to go 
from here with us, an’ back we’ll drive, take the 

[ 143 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 

little girl, an’ be off for East Harland, an’ 
Leander! Think of givin’ a child back to her 
father! I don’t know how Leander ’ll live till 
we come, knowin’ we’ve found her and are tryin’ 
to get her! I hated to call him up and tell him 
because it’d put him through such weary hours, 
but it’s a true sayin’ that grief never kills, so I 
think he’ll weather it.” 

“It’s been a blessed trip, Tom dear, and that’s 
the truth!” Mrs. Burke beamed on her husband 
as she spoke. “It wouldn’t be in nature to grudge 
the child to her poor father, but I covet her my- 
self. I’d like the chance to feed her up, and teach 
her to run, screamin’ with joy, at play.” 

“We’d better go to bed early, for little sleep 
did these children have last night, an’ we’ll all 
be goin’ off to church betimes,” said Mr. Burke. 
“Ellen, it’s you will need to go, if you’re covetin’ 
lonely Leander’s small Jean, against the law of 
nature an’ the Ten Commandments!” 

The small inn lived up to its name of Take- 
Your-Ease as to its beds. Poppy intended to 
lie awake and play that she was a great singer, 
resting in her hotel after a concert, and that the 
flowered cushions of the rocker were flowers sent 
her to celebrate her triumph. But she was too 
sleepy to play anything; all three little girls slept 
[ 144 ] 



«HE GATHERED HIM IKTO HER BROAD LAP AXD BEGAN TO ROCK HIM 
HARD. 




THE BOTTLE IMP 


so deeply that Mrs. Burke had to waken them to 
go with her to church. 

“Mark, and the other gentleman of our party, 
are dressed and gone down to wait for us, girls 
dear,” she said. “You must hurry a little.” 

Isabel, Prue and Poppy had simple white 
frocks and white straw hats with them for occa- 
sions when they would be required. They were 
such a spotless trio, so sweet and maidenly in 
them, as they came downstairs, that Mr. Burke 
looked down on them with loving moisture in his 
eyes. 

“May you always be clad in white-innocence, 
dear blossoms of God’s garden!” he exclaimed, 
with the fervor of his sentimental race. 

It was a fairly large church to which Mr. Burke 
guided his charges, but it was filled to overflowing. 
Near where she and Mark sat, apaii: from the 
others, Isabel noted a large, coarsely-built 
woman, with whom was a httle boy with dark 
hair, large dark eyes, a dehcate face, and a 
crooked foot, which she could see made him lame, 
though this, of course, was to be seen only when 
he stood. He had a way of sucking in his under 
lip and holding it with his two small front teeth 
that suggested a timid rabbit. 

Coming out of church Isabel became separated 
from Mark, and found herself directly behind 

[ 145 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


the woman and the child whom she had seen dur- 
ing the service. 

“Lame or not, step up here,” the woman 
snapped at the child. “Whatever made me 
bring you, I don’t know, Jean Lamb!” 

“Oh!” cried Isabel. 

She turned and wired her way through the 
throng, to the indignation of several, and forced 
herself up to Mr. Burke. 

“Mr. Burke, oh, dear, Mr. Burke, I’ve found 
him! He isn’t a girl at all; he’s a boy, and he’s 
right over there, and he’s a little lame! Get a 
policeman, or whatever you have to have, and 
take him! Hurry! Over there!” Isabel panted. 

“Whatever in all this world are you tellin’ me, 
Isabel?” demanded Mr. Burke. 

“Jean Lamb! The woman — ^he’s with a big, 
cross woman — called him that. He’s a dear lit- 
tle feUow. Do hurry! The girl’s another Jean. 
She said Jean Lamb. If you don’t hurry, you 
may lose him, there’s such a crowd!” Isabel 
wrung her hands. 

“Take Prue and Poppy back to O’Rourke’s, 
Ellen. Isabel come with me. I’U have Mark, 
too, if we can find him; he’ll be waitin’ us at the 
gate, anyway,” said Mr. Burke. “It’s a queer 
tale, but we must look into it. Is the world turn- 
[ 146 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

in’ altogether into Jean kids, girls and boys? 
Come, then.” 

They found Mark, or he found them; he was 
looking for them, and Isabel pointed out the 
large woman and small boy, limping shghtly, at 
her side. 

‘‘We follow them, an’ ask questions in the 
neighborhood,” muttered Mr. Burke. “Truth, 
Leander was much such another boy, when he 
was twice this child’s age an’ I first knew him! 
I’m forced to believe that this, an’ not the girl, 
is our prize. 

They followed the woman to a street where 
the houses were small and plain; a neighborhood 
that might be described correctly as “poor but re- 
spectable.” Mr. Burke had intended to go about 
getting the child cautiously, inquiring in the 
neighborhood what was known of his history, but 
the woman, talking to the little boy, more for 
her own benefit than his, spoke of “taking the 
train,” “getting him ready to go away,” “not 
having enough time,” so that he decided that de- 
lay might be dangerous. 

“Pardon me, m’am,” Mr. Burke said, acting 
on a swift resolution, and touching the woman on 
the arm, “but would you tell me what you’re 
doin’ with this little lad, the son of Leander Lamb 
of East Harland, his own name bein’ Jean?” 

[ 147 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“And who are you?’’ cried the woman. 

“My name is Thomas Burke, bottle dealer, of 
906 North Street, Hertonsburg, m’am,” said Mr. 
Burke most pohtely. “I’m travelin’, in a way, 
an’ in a way I’m out on my business. My friend, 
Mr. Lamb, has given me power to act for him 
to get his child, an’ bring him home to his father. 
I have the authority from him with me, witnessed. 
I thought I was on the child’s trail yesterday, an’ 
notified my friend last night, an’ he’s told me to 
go ahead.” 

“That’s no lie for me,” thought Mr. Burke, 
as he waited the effect of his announcement, “an’ 
if ’twas another trail, an’ another child, an’ what’s 
more a girl an’ no boy, still it’s the truth I’m 
speakin’ to her!” 

The woman eyed Mr. Burke suspiciously, an- 
grily, at first, but no one could long resist the 
steady kindhness in his eyes. The woman’s man- 
ner softened. 

“I took the boy from his mother, who is an 
unnatural woman, and would have done ’most 
anything to get rid of him. I’ve no place, nor 
time, nor wish for him, but I knew he could be 
worse off than with me, and I let her leave him 
with me. She must have a spite against the 
father, for she told me he was dead. I’d have 
made her take the boy to him, had I known he 
[148] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


was living. If that’s what you’ll do with him, 
you’re welcome to him, but I’ll have to have 
proof. I haven’t much use for children, but I’ve 
got to make sure the boy’ll be in right hands, 
since he’s been left in mine,” the woman said. 

“You’re right, m’am, an’ behavin’ like a lady 
with a conscience, if I may make so bold as to 
say so,” said Mr. Burke. “I’ve a lawyer friend 
in town, Mr. James Hay. Do you know him? 
Would it suit you to come with me to the nearest 
telephone station, an’ let Mr. Hay set you at 
ease as to me, an’ what I’ll do with the boy?” 

“It would,” said the woman shortly. “Let him 
stay with your two children till it is done. He’s 
lame and can’t walk fast, and I’m in a hurry 
to get a train at noon. Jean, sit on the steps 
with this boy and girl till I come back.” 

Little Jean, who was small for his age, evi- 
dently was used to doing anything that he was 
told to do; nothing seemed to surprise him. In- 
deed the poor child had led a hard life with his 
unnatural mother. 

“Our steps is here,” he remarked, and led the 
way for Isabel and Mark to the steps, and pa- 
tiently sat down upon them. 

Isabel turned up her snowy skirt and placed 
herself on the child’s right; Mark rested one foot 
on the second step and stood ; there was nothing 

[ 149 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 

he could do to protect his white hnen knicker- 
bockers, and the steps were amazingly dusty. 

“Did he mean me?” inquired Jean. 

“Who, dear?” asked Isabel gently. 

“The big man with the blue eyes, that knew 
some one I belong to,” explained Jean. “He said 
a father. Is it? Is he my father? Where’d I 
get him? I had one; he used to be Dadlamb, I 
called him, but he’s dead. I keep going around 
now.” 

“Oh, you dear little fellow!” cried Isabel 
throwing her arms around Jean in a burst of pity. 
“I am sure your ‘Dadlamb’ isn’t dead at all, and 
that we’re going to take you to him! Oh, it 
was me — I — who happened to notice you in 
church, and heard your name, and so found you! 
Really me, myself! Oh, I’m gladr 

“Do you suppose it only happened, Isa? It 
was in church, you see,” hinted Mark, shrinking 
from a more direct expression of his feeling in 
regard to it. 

“You’re a lovely, white girl,” said Jean sol- 
emnly. “You are the beautifullest, and all your 
eyes go in and out, bigger and bright and blacker ! 
But they’re blue. I think I love you very much 
indeed. Here comes Mrs. Ursula Ludwig back, 
with the tall man.” 

Isabel and Mark looked hard at the pair as 
[ 150 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

little Jean spoke. No need to ask the result of 
telephoning! Mr. Burke almost strutted, he 
was so proud and glad. 

“Well, little Jean Lamb, I’m to take you rid- 
in’ in my big wagon, an’ I’ll have you back to 
your father in no time !” he cried. 

“You’re going away with these children, Jean. 
Your father is alive, and sent for you,” added the 
woman, whom the child had called Mrs. Ursula 
Ludwig. “Come into the house while I put up 
your clothes. Better come inside,” she added 
to Mr. Burke and the children. 

They all went into the neat little house, and 
were left alone while Mrs. Ludwig bore off Jean 
to be prepared. 

Presently they heard him coming down the 
stairs, a step at a time, with his little lame foot. 

“Could I take my kitty?” he was asking. “I 
want my kitty. She loves me. No one loves me 
but my kitty, and she has stripes all over her; 
she’d die ’thout me.” 

“No, you can’t take the kitten. These people 
wouldn’t be bothered with a cat,” said Mrs. Lud- 
wig, not unkindly, but without any sympathy 
for the child’s love for his pet. 

“Oh-h'h!” Jean wailed in a heart-broken, un- 
childish way, and Mr. Burke rushed out into 
the narrow entry. 


[ 151 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 

“Sure you take the kitten, lad dearl” he cried. 
“Take a whole litter of kittens, an’ throw in the 
old cat for good measure ! Is there a basket stout 
enough to hold this kitten that I could buy, an’ 
will you catch it and bring it to me, m’am, to 
tie up for the little lad?” 

“Well, I guess Jean’s coming into different 
days,” said Mrs. Ludwig with a smile, as she went 
toward the kitchen. 

She came back with a stout basket, a long 
string and a small tiger kitten. 

“There’s no old cat, and no more kittens than 
this,” she said, and laughed. “I’ll contribute the 
basket.” She let Jean kiss the kitten at his re- 
quest, and put her into the basket, which Mr. 
Burke tied securely. 

“They break out when you wouldn’t think they 
could, such strength is there in them, bein’ ner- 
vous, when they’re scared,” he said. “Ready now, 
little Jean! Good-by, m’am.” 

“Good-by. I’m glad to be free of the care 
of the boy, yet he’s a good child. Kiss me good- 
by, Jean. God bless you, you quiet little crea- 
ture.” 

Mrs. Ludwig showed a little feeling as she 
kissed Jean twice, but the child took it all in his 
steady, patient manner, and shpped his hand into 
Mark’s. His eyes showed a dumb admiration 
[ 152 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


for the beautiful, tall boy, who was just old 
enough for a little boy of five to adore, and bril- 
bant enough to seem to Jean hke a sort of un- 
earthly vision. 

“The rescue party,” as Mark called it, came 
out into the street, and turned toward the Take- 
Your-Ease. They walked on slowly, because 
Jean’s lame foot dragged as he walked. He held 
tight to Mark’s hand; Mr. Burke carried the 
kitten’s basket. Isabel followed, a httle back of 
them, in order to contemplate and brood joyfully 
over the rapid, the amazing events of this warm 
Sunday morning, in the Httle city of Lytelton. 

Coming up the stairs of the inn, Mr. Burke 
tucked Jean under his arm, to run up more 
swiftly. 

“Ellen, Ellen, we’ve got the child ! Little J ean 
Lamb! Will you mother him?” he called. 

Would she mother him? Would Ellen Burke 
moth er any forsaken, lonely child? 

She sprang up from the rocker in which she 
was musically resting, soothed into a half nap 
by its creak. 

Instantly she had Httle Jean in her arms and 
was smothering him with kisses, murmuring all 
sorts of blessings upon him, as she kissed him. 

Then she gathered him into her broad lap and 
began to rock him hard, singing a low, waiHng 

[ 153 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


air that her own mother had sung to her at J ean’s 
age, and which she, in turn, had learned from her 
mother on the Irish coast. 

Jean nestled his head into her shoulder, and 
looked up at her with his big, dark eyes, trying 
to understand what this warmth of heart could 
mean. Yet he knew, the poor little worse-than 
motherless child, well knewl 

“I’d like to have my kitty rock with us,” he 
said, and the kitten was released. 

Jean held the kitten to his heart, and let him- 
self rest on the heart of the kind woman who had 
lost all her children, and whose tears stood in her 
eyes to think that this living child had not been 
precious to his mother. 

“Well, praises be, there’s few like that!” she 
said to herself, and with a touch of her hand 
gathered Jean closer, and tucked the sagging kit- 
ten up closer to Jean. 


[ 154 ] 


CHAPTER XI 


LITTLE JEAN AND LESSER JEAN 

E arly Monday morning the Bottle Imp 
was ready for her crew, and the buckboard 
was no less ready for its one, or more, passengers. 
There never was any telhng how many it would 
have; sometimes there was but one in it, driving 
it ; again it would carry two ; sometimes all four 
children piled on it, with a dog or two for good 
measure, and sometimes, when a long stretch of 
straight road lay ahead. Hurrah would be tied to 
the big wagon, and they would all get under 
cover in the Bottle Imp, and have a gay time to- 
gether. 

The Bottle Imp and the buckboard looked 
that Monday morning as if it were indeed wash- 
ing day, and the washing had been done early, 
which, as far as they were concerned, was ex- 
actly the case. 

Mr. O’Rourke, the proprietor of the Take- 
Your-Ease, wishing to do something quite special 
to prove his pleasure in his friend’s staying at his 
house, gave orders that the wagon and the buck- 

[ 155 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


board should be scrubbed up before they went 
away. Scrubbed they were, and polished dry 
with soft cloths, so that they positively shone 
in the sunshine when the hour for starting off 
came. And that hour was but seven, so the stable 
hands who had done the washing must have been 
up before the sun, or no later than he was, to get 
it done and highly finished so early. 

“Good-by, Tom. Good-by, Mrs. Tom,” said 
the beaming proprietor of the Take-Your-Ease 
as, with all his crew disposed in place and the 
small Jean and his little striped kitten wedged 
between him and his wife, Mr. Burke gathered 
up the lines and chirruped to Cork. 

“I’ve never seen the hke of the combination 
you’ve got there — ^three little girls and a boy, and 
all of them of a pattern that’s their own, and the 
little grave child, and two dogs and a cat! My 
word, Tom, but you’re like the ark on wheels, no 
less ! But it’s fine and welcome you were, and I 
wish you luck, and that you’d come back next 
week, if you brought with you a laughin’ hyena 
and an elephant, a pair of twins, and two sets 
of triplets, and a cage of monkeys!” 

“I’m thinkin’ I’d need a band wagon and some 
gilded chariots in that case, John, for ’twould 
be a circus I’d be, and no bottle dealer!” cried 
[ 156 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

Mr. Burke. “Good-by, and I’ll be back one of 
these days, whatever I bring with me.” 

“I want to go back the way we came, Tom,” 
said Mrs. Burke, and her husband looked over 
his shoulder to smile at Isabel. 

“I know why!” he cried. “You’re thinkin’ of 
the poor little girl- Jean, who turned out the 
wrong one, lookin’ all the time as if she needed to 
be some one’s right one!” 

“And if I am,” maintained his wife stoutly, 
“I’m not ashamed to pity a forlorn mite like 
that.” 

So Mr. Burke, who, if the truth were told, had 
the same thought as his wife, drove back toward 
East Harland, which was a two days’ journey 
away at the rate they progressed, by the roads 
over which he had come. 

Bunkie was greatly disturbed by the presence 
of the kitten, as long as it was shut up in its 
basket; when it was out in sight he paid no at- 
tention to it whatever. Isabel had made a rib- 
bon collar for it, ending in a rosette of the ribbon 
gathered into a circle, in order that J ean might 
put a string through the collar and thus could 
hold the kitten in his arms, to enjoy the scenery 
and calm Bunkie’s feelings. 

The kitten showed no desire to escape, how- 

[ 157 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


ever; it was like Jean himself, a good deal sub- 
dued. 

“We had to keep her in the house, because there 
were so many wickednesses in the yards ’round 
there, and they’d of stoned her,” Jean explained. 
“So she never did know ’bout running around a 
lot. Do you think at my Dadlamb’s she can 
play out?” 

“Indeed she can! It’s the dearest place, Jean! 
So can you play out ! Don’t you remember how 
nice it was?” asked Prue. 

Jean shook his head. “I think I was young 
when I went away,” he said. 

It was noticeable that he never made the least 
mention of the unnatural mother who had stolen 
him from the father who loved him, and had so 
strangely failed to love him herself. 

“What’s the kitten’s name, Jeanie?” asked Isa- 
bel. 

“She didn’t have a name ’cause none was pretty 
’nough,” said Jean. “Now her name is Mr. 
Burke.” 

And by this funny choice they knew that silent 
little Jean was both happy and grateful. 

“I’ve an idea. Tommy,” said Mrs. Burke as 
they drew near the road in which was the house 
where they had seen the other little Jean. “In 
a country place all that’s to be known of one an- 
[ 158 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


other the neighbors know — and oftener than not 
it’s more! So let you go to some of the other 
houses near by, and hear what’s to be learned of 
that woman who has the child with her — and how 
she came to get the poor little mite.” 

“I’ve a feelin’ we’d better not be seen, if there’s 
anything for us to do in the case, for that woman 
took a mislikin’ to me,” said Mr. Burke. 

“ ’Twas not to you, but to every one, then. 
Tommy,” said Mrs. Burke, not willing to admit 
that any one could dislike her Tom for himself. 

“We’ll make a camp for the night, over in 
those little woods to the right, an’ from there 
I’ll go on foot, with a handful of tins an’ to 
gather bottles. Have you thought what we’d do, 
Ellen, should the little girl need befriendin’?” 

“Well you know what we’ll do, Thomas 
Burke!” replied his wife, and he smiled. 

The Bottle Imp turned into a — ^well, what 
should one call it? Not a road, for it was not 
clear enough for that; merely a trail where de- 
pressions on each side showed that some sort of 
vehicle had, at some time, been driven in there 
more than once. It led into a small woods, out 
of which the first growth had been cut, leaving 
space between the young trees. It was an attrac- 
tive place to camp for the night. As Isabel said, 
they had found only good places for camping 

[ 159 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 

all the way. In the morning Mrs. Burke begged 
to be allowed to go to ask for bottles, and try 
to sell tins in her husband’s place; she felt sure 
that her woman’s sharpness to read symptoms 
would discover more about that little girl, Jean, 
than he could. 

“Oh, you may all come along,” she said, this 
being settled, as the crew was discussing who 
should go with her. “The small boy must stay 
with the captain of the crew, but what harm can 
it do if I have a bodyguard?” 

“Let me ask for bottles, please!” Poppy 
begged. “I never in all my life went to a house 
and asked for bottles!” 

“Who ever did?” cried Mark. “Try it dif- 
ferent ways! Your bottles or your life!” Mark 
struck a threatening attitude. 

“Sweet lady, bottles, please!” Isabel whined 
after him. 

“Bottles, oh, bottles!” shouted Poppy. “Gin- 
ger pop bottles for poor Poppy!” 

“Just one milk bottle for my starving baby,” 
moaned Prue, piteously. 

Then the entire four shrieked with laughter, 
and went prancing along, singing in chorus the 
foolish jingle which Mark chanted first: 

“Bottles, bottles for our pains; 

Bottles, empty like our brains; 

[ 160 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

Bottles big, and bottles small, 

Bring us bottles; we’ll take all. 
Bottles, bottles! Hear our cry! 

Give us bottles, or we’ll die.” 

The utterly senseless rigamarole filled the chil- 
dren with glee, and they went dancing along, two 
by two, swinging hands and shouting it, until 
Mrs. Burke protested. 

“Oh, ye mad creatures!” she cried, laughing. 
“Will you stop your craziness? What do you 
suppose I’ll learn about that poor child if you 
have every one shuttin’ doors on us for a travel- 
in’ lunatic branch asylum? Not a bottle will 
you get ; sure they’ll be afraid to trust you with a 
bottle, lest you throw it at them, as a luny would ! 
Quiet now, and act sensible. I’ll try that house 
first,” she added.” It was a small house, and a 
small woman opened its door to the knock. 
Poppy was the one who summoned her. 

“I have no bottles,” said the little woman who 
looked patient and forlorn. “I rarely buy any- 
thing in a bottle, and when I do I get the old 
one filled. Are they all yours? Twins?” She 
pointed to Isabel and Mark. 

“No, but you picked out the two who are most 
alike,” said Mrs. Burke. “They’re not mine, 

[ 161 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 

none of ’em. Mine are all dead. Have you 
children?” 

“Xo, not one,” said the woman. “I’d like 
to take a girl, but laws-a-me, I couldn’t keep 
her.” 

“Who’s the woman dovm a bit from here, 
who’s taken that little girl called Jean?” asked 
Mrs. Burke, venturing a shot in the dark. 

The shot hit the mark. “Wliat do you know 
about her? Where’d you hear of her?” cried the 
woman. “Come on in. It’s the worst story ! If 
you know any of the child’s kin, do for mercy’s 
sake get ’em to come take her away I Mrs. Jervis 

ain’t any more fit Why, the poor child’d 

better be dead than there — and will be, too, soon.” 

“I don’t know one thing, but my man saw the 
child and the woman, and it didn’t need more. 
What’s the story? Has she a right to the child?” 
cried Mrs. Burke. 

“No, no more than nobody has a right to her. 
Her father and mother got killed on the track 
down here; they were Polish people, real nice, 
too! And Mrs. Jervis took in the child, think- 
ing to raise her to work. She’s sick of the bar- 
gain, and takes her sickness out on the child. 
What makes you ask?” cried the woman eagerly. 

Isabel and Prue and Mark fell to liking her at 

[ 162 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


once for her evident excited sympathy for this 
unfortunate little girl. 

Quickly Mrs. Bui'ke made her decision, though 
of course it had been pretty well made during 
the days since she had heard of the child and had 
been longing for her. 

'‘The reason I ask is I’m ready to take her,” 
she said, flushing deeply. “My little children 
are all in heaven ; I need the baby, and she needs 
me. My husband is willing. We’re comfort- 
able people, not rich, not what I’d call poor; just 
right off, and dear knows, we’d be good to the 
child!” 

“I’d know that without your telling me!” cried 
the tiny woman, much excited by this amazing an- 
nouncement. 

“Do you go tell that woman you’re willin’ to 
try keepin’ the child. Get her, and then hand 
her over to me,” Mrs. Burke spoke fast, and 
grew very red. “I’m afraid if she saw me she’d 
begin to hem and haw, and want to make a fuss, 
me bein’ strange to her. Let you bring the child 
— right away! Our wagon is down in the woods. 
We’ll take the child, and do our best by her. We 
live in Hertonsburg, 906 North street; you can 
ask about us, but don’t wait now! And Mr. 
Burke, my man, will make it all right with your 
town officers, only let you get the child!” 

[ 163 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“My, but you’re quick!” gasped the woman, 
yet she took a sunbonnet off its nail and put it 
on, going toward the door. 

“Way to be,” said Mrs. Burke, and watched 
her depart. 

It seemed a long time to the impatient wait- 
ers before she retmned, but when she did come, 
she was leading by the hand the little girl Jean, 
who looked smaller and paler, and more wretched 
than the Bottle Imp friends had remembered her. 

“Mrs. Jervis was kinder minded to hang on 
to her, when she found she could hand her over 
to me, but she was that tired of her that she gave 
in quick, especially when I made out I wasn’t 
particular, but only made the offer to try it,” the 
little woman said, entering. “She hadn’t any 
papers; all she had to do was to hand her over, 
as I hand her on to you, now. I’d keep her and 
welcome, if I wasn’t as poor as a church mouse, 
and a good deal rheumatic.” 

“Come here, my darlin’I” cried Mrs. Burke, 
kneeling and holding out her arms, with tearful 
eyes, as she looked at the pinched, timid child, 
whose great dark eyes seemed to be two-thirds 
of her delicately cut face. 

Small Jean walked over to her slowly, staring 
at her, afraid, yet half -trusting. As Mrs. Burke 
gathered her close to her warm heart the gi'eat 
[ 164 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

eyes softened, and the little head went trustfully 
down into her deep shoulder. 

“God love you, my sweet !” murmured the good 
woman. “And now, m’am, I'm beholden to you 
for the help you’ve given me and the child, both. 
It’s been a good day’s work. I’ll take her down 
to our wagon, where my husband is, and we’ll 
settle it with the town, and be off.” 

“Would you let me know if there’s any 
trouble ?” asked the tiny woman. “And I want to 
kiss the child good-by.” 

“You’ll see her again, I promise you,” said 
Mrs. Burke holding up httle Jean’s head for the 
kiss, already with the air of a mother’s author- 
ity. “And we’ll find a way to do something to 
prove we’re grateful to you, never doubt it. 
Good-by.” 

She swung little Jean up in her arms ; the child 
was four years old, but scarcely heavier than a 
child of two. Then Mrs. Burke strode away, 
holding the baby tight. 

“Well, my goodness, of aU happening 
voyages!” remarked Poppy, who had been a 
dazed and amazed witness of these rapid events. 

“I think it is the most beautiful, the most 
heavenly thing in all this world, to go riding 
through the country, gathering up miserable lit- 
tle children and taking care of them! This is 

[ 165 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


two ; only think ! Two children safe in the Bottle 
Imp, and going to keep safe 1 I don’t care wheth- 
er I get well or die, or what, I am just thankful 
I came!” cried Isabel walking along in an 
ecstacy. 

“Oh, die nothing!” exclaimed Poppy, instantly 
angry at the suggestion. “You’re weller and 
weller, Isabel Lindsay! Ain’t you ashamed 
talking like that? And all the children we get 
are Jeans; boys and girls, and all kinds, are 
Jeans!” 

Mark promptly stood on his head and walked 
a short distance on his hands. 

“Poppy always says something!” he chuckled. 
“But say, Isa, you and I are crazy about the 
Round Table and knightly deeds. Isn’t it queer, 
but, honestly, isn’t the big wagon, and the way 
we ride around, about the same as the caparisoned 
charger and the way the knight on him rescues 
maidens? It seems queer to think of it — a bottle 
dealer’s wagon, with tins, but isn’t it, honest?” 

Isabel considered, then she said slowly: “It 
is just the same, Mark Jack-in-the-Box, and we 
know why ! It is being good, and doing the right, 
and trying to help. That’s what my dearest 
motherums always tells me, that goodness is of 
no place, nor time, nor class. It is perfectly beau- 
[166] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


tiful, it surely is, and we are going about pre- 
cisely like knights of old!” 

For a moment Isa looked sweetly serious and 
uplifted, then her eyes danced and she began 
to laugh. 

“And don’t you think that the knight’s armor 
must have sounded a whole lot like Mr. Burke’s 
tins, rattling, you know?” she asked. 

There was brief delay in getting the right to 
take away the small Jean. Nobody wanted her; 
the town officials were only too willing to get 
off their hands the cost of her maintenance; 
people were already grumbling at them for in- 
creased taxes, and even this small human being 
added to the poor rates. It proved that her par- 
ents had been Italian, not Polish, but no one 
was sure what her name was. “Dessantow,” it 
was spelled on the records, and the Burkes great- 
ly admired Isabel and Mark because, between 
them, they figured out that it must be di Santo. 

“And if that means, as you say it does, ‘of a 
saint,’ then I’ll take it as the best of omens, for 
what I’ll be able to make of her,” said Mrs. 
Burke, cuddling her new treasure close. She 
was so happy in the possession of this little crea- 
ture that her husband’s eyes filled with tears, 
watching her, and seeing what she had suffered in 
the loss of her own babies. 


[ 167 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


Little Jean, with the sweetness of her affec- 
tionate race, already began to expand in the sun- 
shine around her. She, like the first Jean, the 
httle boy, attached herself to Isabel and Mark 
most of all the four children, and they found her 
budding promise of beauty irresistible, as well 
as her soft, shy ways of loving them. 

Everything settled as to the little girl Jean, the 
Bottle Imp prepared to set out for East Har- 
land as fast as it could travel. Leander Lamb 
must be counting the slow minutes before the 
coming of his Jean. 

Isabel and Poppy rode in the buckboard, with 
Jean Lamb and the kitten between them, and 
Mark behind them, at least, in starting. 

Prue stayed in the Bottle Imp, being seized 
with one of her housewifely fits, and undertaking 
to dam stockings for herself and the other three, 
as they drove along. 

The lesser Jean sat between the Burkes, shyly 
showing her new doll the pretty things that they 
passed, bird and tree and flower. 

‘T think,” said Prue suddenly looking up 
from the stocking which she held high, drawn 
over its darning egg, in her left hand, ‘T think 
we can’t say how wonderful our trip is, though 
goodness knows, we don’t seem to say anything 
[ 168 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

else! And Mr. Burke, Mrs. Burke, don’t you 
honestly think Isa is heaps better?” 

“She looks just as fine as silk; not a thing 
wrong with her looks now.” Mrs. Burke an- 
swered emphatically the anxious note in Prue’s 
voice. 

“I’ll lose my guess if the doctor doesn’t say 
there’s not a sign of a spot left on her lung 
when she gets back to Greenacres, an’ he hark- 
ens to her through his cross between a pair of 
compasses an’ a garden hose, which they call a 
stethescope,” added Mr. Burke with his twinkle. 

“I think we really ought to sing the Te 
Deum, only I don’t know how it goes,” said 
Prue, so seriously that Mr. Burke and his wife 
dared not laugh. 


[ 169 ] 


CHAPTER XII 


THE GLOWING FORGE 

N OW bounce along, Cork, my friend, as be- 
comes your name,” Mr. Burke called to 
Cork, “for East Harland is not so far away 
now, an’ it’s the last hour of waitin’ for a good 
time coinin’, and that always has no less than 
twice its sixty minutes in it!” 

Cork may have imderstood, or it quite pos- 
sibly may have been due to the tightening of the 
lines which accompanied this remark, but what- 
ever it was that made him, he started off at a 
good pace. 

The jolting of the wagon, and the consequent 
increased rattle of the tins, put an idea into 
Mark’s head. 

“We ought to have a band playing when we 
drive up to the smithy. Aren’t we coming as 
victors, isn’t this a triumphant entry? Well, 
then, we need a band playing! Let us string 
the tins together, and hang them up, so they’ll 
make a lot of noise. Say yes, Mr. Burke?” 
Mark cried. 

[ 170 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

‘‘Well, I never mind a lot of noise when I feel 
like celebratin’,” admitted Mr. Burke. “Do 
your worst, Mark, lad, as long as you don’t lose 
my tins, nor scratch an’ dent them past sellin’.” 

“Come on, crew!” Mark ordered, as he fell on 
his knees to rummage for rope under the seat 
where an extra supply was carried. 

Under his directions Prue and Isabel worked 
rapidly, stringing tins that had handles by those 
handles, and making nooses to hold pans, which 
it was to be hoped might hold them, but which 
Mrs. Burke eyed with doubtful disfavor. 

Poppy, alone in the buckboard, scolded at be- 
ing cut off from these preparations, but Isabel 
comforted her by calling back to her that all the 
real fun would be hanging these festoons of 
hardware on the wagon, and this they would not 
do till lunch-time when they stopped, and she 
could help in it. 

There are no end of lovely, modest little spots 
tucked away out of notice along nearly every 
country road. To-day, as every day, there was 
no difficulty in finding one of them in which to 
halt for lunch, to feed and water the horses — 
also the dogs and cat! — and rest cramped muscles 
by moving about. 

“Now this is not the Bottle Imp, not for a 
while,” announced Mark. “This is the triumphal 

[ 171 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“We were all badly frightened, Poppy,” said 
Mrs. Lindsay. “But, as you say, we came to 
know the Burkes through your naughtiness, and 
we are all fond of them.” 

“I used to be a pill,” said Poppy mournfully, 
unconscious that she had relapsed into the slang 
discarded faithfully since she had been within 
Bena’s hearing. Poppy was intent upon being 
a Good Example, as the more fortunate, though 
the younger of the Meiggs sisters. 

“A pill coated with wintergreen; that’s red!” 
cried Rena, enchanted with her own wit. 

“It isn’t pretty on this highway, but it’s a 
pretty nice day,” observed Prue. “Isn’t this the 
ravelings of Hertonsburg? Isn’t the city only a 
little way off?” 

“Ravelings !” Mark turned around in the seat 
to laugh. “Hertonsburg ravelings; our party’s 
revelings! Xow watch the town knit up the 
ravelings I Houses getting right together, solid ; 
stores coming in between ! Dirty babies playing 
all over everything! Can you dodge them, Mrs. 
Lindsay ? I’m going to invent a car with a scoop- 
front, like a cow catcher on a locomotive; scoop 
kids up and toss ’em till they’re scared, and cured 
of making themselves a nuisance under wheels, 
and then throw ’em into a basket on top the car, 
to be collected at so much each.” 

[ 172 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


watching trees and things going past when 
you’re on the road.” 

“Dad and I read As You Like It out doors, in 
the woods, just this last May, it was fine,” said 
Mark. “There’s something in it about ‘books 
in the running brooks’; that’s our library this 
summer !” 

“That’s all right,” said Poppy with an air of 
finding it quite wrong, “but it doesn’t learn you 
to talk to watch for tadpoles and things. Yes, 
I know it, Prue, I know I hadn’t ought to say 
learn; it was teach, but that’s just what I say: I 
gotter read dictionaries, and keep up, ’cause I’m 
going to be a lady, or fade right out.” 

“That sounds more like being cotton stuff in 
the wash,” remarked Prue, but she looked kindly 
at Poppy, feehng greatly older than she was, 
and much wiser, though there were but two years 
and a half between them, and Poppy’s lacks were 
the result of circumstances; she was far more 
clever than Prue. 

Poppy’s deft fingers now came into play to 
advantage; she hung tins on the sides of the 
wagon, as if she were a spider stringing fibers 
across space. However, Mrs. Burke distrusted 
her thoroughness. 

“Just look to Poppy’s knots, will you, Mark 
and Prue and Isabel?” she hinted. “She gets 

[ 173 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


over the ground ’most too quick to have it hold.” 

When the nearly-two hours of nooning which 
the heat of the day made Mr. Burke take, instead 
of one hour, were past, and everybody was 
stowed away for the final stage of the drive to 
East Harland, the former Bottle Imp, which 
for the time being was to be regarded as a 
triumphal chariot, instead, looked decidedly 
queer, strung over with tinware. Nevertheless, 
it shone in the sun’s rays to an incredible degree, 
and it rang with rattling tins, even beyond the 
decorators’ fondest hopes. 

‘T’U have a pretty sixpence to pay if we meet 
any teams, for there’s not a horse with any self- 
respect that wouldn’t bolt, meetin’ such a glit- 
terin’, rattlin’, crazy contraption as you mad 
youngsters have turned my respectable wagon 
into I But it’s good for me that we don’t be 
meetin’ horses often, the roads bein’ hummin’ 
with cars that scare, but don’t get scared,” said 
Mr. Burke, giving Cork the signal to quicken 
his pace, and so set the “garlands” jarring into 
a noise that could be heard for a great distance. 

“It makes my kitten a little bit jumpy to hear 
’em rattlin’,” observed Jean, the boy, energetically 
scratching the kitten’s neck and holding her 
tighter. 

Although Cork and Hurrah steadily did their 
[ 174 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

full duty, keeping up a good jogging gait that 
asked no allowance because of the increased heat 
of the day, still it was nearing sunset hour when 
the big wagon, tins and noise and glitter and all, 
with its precious freight, passed the boundaries 
of Harland, which were marked with large bill- 
boards. One of these read: “Town Boundary. 
Fifteen miles speed limit.” Another, on the 
right, bore the word: “Welcome!” in very large 
letters, while on the left — ^which would be the 
right going the other way, out of the town — 
there was its mate, bidding drivers: “Good-by! 
Come Again.” 

Mrs. Burke rapidly gave polishing touches to 
little Jean Lamb, to make him ready to be re- 
ceived by his father. Then she aroused her own 
sleepy little Jean, and brushed her soft, dark 
hair into rings over her fingers, and changed her 
tousled pink chambray frock for an immaculate 
white one. Though little Jean, the girl, was not 
likely to receive notice when Jean, the boy, was 
getting a welcome, Mrs. Burke was so fond of 
the sweet little creature that she wanted her to 
be at her best when any one, whether interested 
in her or not, saw her for the first time. And in- 
deed she was an exquisite little thing, and now 
that the warm summer air and sunshine, good 
food and loving petting encircled her, already the 

[ 175 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


tiny face was losing its pinched look and was 
developing real beauty. 

“There’s the smithy!” said Mark, pointing, a 
thrill in his voice as he spoke. Silence fell on the 
group in the noisy wagon. It was not possible 
to be calm as they drove up to where they knew 
that Leander Lamb was watching and waiting 
for his child’s coming. 

“I think I ’member it here,” little Jean Lamb 
broke the silence to say. 

There in the doorway of the low, weather- 
blackened shop, stood the thin, somewhat bent 
figure of Leander Lamb. There was no doubt 
that he saw the wagon; there was not the least 
chance that he would not have heard it, but he 
did not move. 

“Bowled over, he’s so glad!” murmured Mr. 
Burke, and drew his cuff over his eyes, wet with 
sympathetic tears. 

“Come, Leander, man; come get him!” he 
called, and held up little Jean for his father to 
see. 

The sight broke the spell that held the father, 
a prisoner to his overpowering joy. 

Leander Lamb started with a queer cry, and 
came running, staggering shghtly, and wavering, 
but, nevertheless, straight to the wagon and to 
his boy. 

[ 176 ] 



HE HELD UP HIS ARMS AND MR. BURKE PLACED LITTLE JEAN IN THEM 




m 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

He held up his arms, and Mr. Burke, leaning 
over, placed little Jean in them. They tightened 
over the child, and Leander kissed him, kissed 
his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, his eyes, his 
chin, his thin little throat, sobbing and shaking, 
yet laughing, as he did so, and saying over and 
over: 

“Little Jean, little Jean, oh, my little Jean!” 

“I know you now, Dadlamb; I ’member you 
now! Has you got a jawbreaker in this little 
pocket?” Jean said. 

And Leander Lamb laughed out with sudden 
relief and triumph. 

“She didn’t make him forget me, after aUl 
He does remember me, the little lamb! I kept 
big candy balls in that pocket for him, always!” 
he cried, and bore the child into the smithy, never 
once thinking of the Burkes, nor gratitude, at 
least gratitude in form. As to that his heart was 
near breaking with grateful joy. 

But no one minded in the least; they all un- 
derstood. 

“Well, if there’d been nothin’ else but that 
happened good in my life, I’d be glad I was 
born,” said Thomas Burke, wiping his eyes 
openly, unashamed of tears. As to the children 
and his wife they were all crying heartily. 

“Now get out, all of you,” said Mr. Burke. 

[ 177 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“Sure, Leander forgot to say so, but he’d be 
wantin’ us in to tell him every last syllable about 
how we came upon the boy.” 

And as he spoke, Leander Lamb, remember- 
ing his manners, but still more his desire for this 
very information, came out to bid the rescue 
party come into the shop, just as they started to 
do so. 

While the three grown-ups sat on the bench 
along the wall, hearing and telhng the story of 
the little boy Jean’s finding, and the companion 
story of the httle girl Jean’s rescue through it, 
both httle Jeans dozing in loving arms while the 
story was telling, Isabel, Prue, Poppy and Mark 
explored the smithy. It was a fascinating place 
of dark shadows, with all sorts and sizes of bolts 
and bits of iron scattered about, and the scent 
of horses and burnt hoofs, not wholly pleasant, 
yet far from downright unpleasant, hanging 
around its rafters. Any quantity of wagon parts 
lay or stood against the walls, and parts of 
automobiles jostled them, for Leander Lamb did 
simpler repairs on these and other machines. 
Far at the darkest end that abutted on the river, 
the children discovered a great sliding door that 
could be withdrawn, and a water wheel hung 
out over the stream, which had once been daily 
[ 178 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

turned by the water from the dam, but now was 
seldom used. 

“My, it’s a nice, funny, horrid place, isn’t it?” 
said Poppy. “It’s spookishi” 

“You could make up all kinds of stories about 
it,” said Isabel slowly. “I’d like to stay here 
awhile, and pretend things.” 

“Oh, Isa, we did pretend things when we were 
here before!” cried Prue. “I’d forgotten all 
about it! We laid birch twigs on the forge; 
don’t you know ? And you made up a fairy story 
about wishes, and the enchanted princess. Can’t 
we finish it somehow? It was so nice.” 

“Ye-es, I suppose we can.” Isabel considered 
how it might be done as she answered. “Well, 
first let’s draw up aroimd the forge. Mark, ask 
if we may pump up the fire. It would be more 
like magic to have the fire going.” 

“He says yes, he doesn’t mind,” said Mark, 
coming back with both the little Jeans. “The 
kiddies wanted to come too, so I brought them.” 

“You darling!” cried Isabel, hugging Jean- 
girl, who had completely ensnared Isabel with 
her deerlike eyes and gentle ways. 

“Now then, let’s pump up the fire. That’s 
coming! I don’t suppose we should burn the 
coal — no, it’s wood ! — ^too much. That ought to 
be enough; we don’t need more than a glow. 

[ 179 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


First of all, we must each tell what we wished. 
Mark is the oldest. Mark, what did you wish?” 

‘‘I wished Isabel would get quite weU,” said 
Mark. 

“Oh, did you, Mark dear ! Prue, what did you 
wish?” Isabel went on. 

“I wished Isabel would get quite well,” said 
Prue. 

“Oh, both of you! For me!” cried Isabel. 
“Poppy, now yours.” 

“I wished Isabel would get quite well,” said 
Poppy solemnly. 

“Every single one of you the same, and all for 
me!” cried Isabel much touched. “Aren’t you 
the dearest things! I said if there was one per- 
fectly imselfish wish that the enchanted, beauti- 
ful princess would be set free! They were all 
unselfish! So now the princess is no longer 
under the spell, but ” 

“Hold on, Isa Bell! You’re wrong about that. 
There wasn’t one unselfish wish, so far. They 
were all the same ; that you’d get well. Call that 
unselfish? That’s straight for ourselves! I’d 
like to know anything worse for us than if you 
did not get well!” Mark interrupted her. 

“Yes, Isa, that’s true,” echoed Prue. “It’s 
the thing we’d want most, if it didn’t do you any 
good.” 

[ 180 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

“Well/’ said Poppy impatiently, “you all do 
a heap of talking about Isabel Lindsay. I guess 
I wished that for my own self, just’s much!” 

“What did you wish, Isabel? Unless you 
wished something unselfish, that poor young 
princess is stuck! We didn’t free her,” cried 
Mark, 

Isabel blushed. She did not want to tell her 
wish, because hers was for something truly 
unselfish, that she particularly dreaded to think 
might happen. 

“I wished that Mark might go away to school 
next winter, if it was best for him, since he wants 
to go,” she said unwillingly. 

“You’re a dear chum, Isa,” said Mark. It 
never occurred to him to pretend not to know 
what it would cost Isabel if he really were to go 
away. He was far too humble to pretend 
humihty, but rather took Isabel’s love for him, 
and need of him, as part of her own sweetness, 
but none the less true. 

“You did it!” cried Prue. “You wished the 
unselfish wish; you even wished for what you 
hated, for Mark’s sake! So you’ve set the prin- 
cess free yourself! What shall we make beheve 
happened when she was set free?” 

“Do I have to say?” asked Isabel, but being 

[ 181 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


used to telling stories and making up events for 
the others, she at once began. 

“The lovely princess, when she found that her 
day had come, slowly rose and came out from 
beneath the forge, which had burned brightly, 
because her loving heart had kindled its flames. 
She came out far below the earth’s surface, and 
she turned to right and to left, wondering which 
way to go to reach her father’s kingdom, from 
which the spell of the wicked witch had stolen 
her, and as she looked, she saw at her right hand 
a noble youth, all dressed in satins and velvets, 
who doffed his plumed hat and said to her: 

“Princess Carita, oh, Carita, Carita, my be- 
loved ” 

Little Jean-girl looked up, her face so 
wreathed in joyful smiles that Isabel thought 
her the prettiest child she had ever seen. 

“Yes, me, me! Mamma’s Carita! Mamma, 
si, mamma, here is your Carita!” she cried. 

Isabel stopped short in her story-weaving and 
stared at the child’s lovely, excited face, while 
Prue, Poppy and Mark also gazed at her, won- 
dering. 

Then Isabel understood. 

“Oh, Carita is an Italian name! It must be 
that her poor mother called this sweet thing 
Carita, and that she is glad to hear her name 
[ 182 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

again I No wonder that she did call her Carital 
That means darling, and only look at her! Is 
that your name, sweetheart? Are you Carita?'* 
Isabel added, kneeling and taking the soft 
flushed face between her hands. 

“Si, si, si!” cried the child in Italian. 
“Mamma! Where is mamma? Mamma’s 
Carita; Carita di Santo am I.” She dropped a 
funny httle curtsey as she spoke. Plainly she 
had been taught thus to answer when asked her 
name, and thus to cmtsey. 

“Some one has called her Jean since her 
mother died,” said Isabel, gathering the child in 
her arms and speaking softly over her head. 
“She was named Carita; she shall be our Carita, 
again. Oh, it has all come true! Just as if I 
wasn’t making it up as I went along, it is true! 
Your wishes are granted, for I’m well, I know I 
am! And there was a lovely princess Carita 
under the spell of the old witch, and we have set 
her free! Really, isn’t it wonderful?” 

^^You set her free, Isabel; you wished im- 
selfishly,” said Prue gravely. 

“It surely is wonderful! When I get back I 
shall have to have my family pinch me black and 
blue, or I’U never believe all the wonders of this 
trip!” 


[ 183 ] 


CHAPTER XIII 


ANY PORT IN A STORM 

O NCE more the Bottle Imp set sail on the 
waste of waters! In other words, early 
in the morning, after a night in camp not far 
from the smithy, Cork was backed into the 
shafts, and Hurrah was got into the lesser vehicle 
the best way it could be managed. Hurrah al- 
ways strongly objected to backing into the 
shafts, and curved himself, and went ahead, in- 
stead of backing, in a manner which was, as 
Poppy truly said, “something scanderloose.’’ 
Then the travelers were ready to go on their 
way. They certainly did “go on their way, re- 
joicing,” this time! 

Leander Lamb stood beside a stump to see 
them off. A night with little Jean in his arms 
had helped to make him realize that his child 
was actually found, and returned to him; his 
face shone like the bright east, where the sun 
was newly arisen. 

On the stump, with both his thin arms around 
his father’s neck, stood httle Jean. He looked 
[ 184 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

somewhat downcast at losing his friends, espe- 
cially Isabel and Mark, to whom both Jeans were 
entirely devoted, but he had been promised to be 
allowed to watch his father shoe horses, even to 
hold the nails for him, and Mr. Burke told him 
that he would come often, and bring the children, 
to visit the smithy, so, though the shadow hung 
over Jean’s face, it was not really a heavy one; 
there was compensation for his regret. 

“Well,” said Poppy, her own face not wholly 
cheerful, “I suppose we’ll just kind of go along 
the rest of the trip ; ’tain’t likely we’ll keep find- 
ing children, and singers, and things like that.” 

“I’ve been on these roads a good many years. 
Poppy, an’ I’ve got to own up that bottles was 
about the most I gathered up, till this time,” said 
Mr. Burke. 

“It’s the hottest morning yet,” observed Prue 
discontentedly. 

“Aren’t we all funny!” said Isabel. “We act 
grumpy! Not Mrs. Burke, nor Mr. Burke; just 
the crew.” 

“Why would I? I’ve still got my Carita,” 
said Mrs. Burke, drawing the dark-eyed mite 
closer to her. “And I’m that pleased her name is 
Carita instead of Jean!” 

“Are you!” cried Isabel greatly relieved. “I 

[ 185 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


was so afraid you’d rather call her Jean! It’s 
easier, but isn’t Carita pretty?” 

“And with a pretty meanin’,” supplemented 
Mrs. Burke. “You little fawn!” She hugged 
Carita harder, and the child looked up at her 
with eyes very like a fawn’s. 

“I don’t know, my dears, as I can hold out to 
finish the trip for as long as I meant to make it. 
I’m anxious to get back home, to 906 North 
Street, and sew up some tasty little dresses for 
the baby. I’ve been thinkin’ how to make ’em, 
since I got her, and I’ve got some beauty ideas in 
my head.” 

“Oh, if you didn’t stay, we couldn’t!” cried 
Prue. “Still,” she added on second thought, “I 
wouldn’t mind so dreadfully, if Isa didn’t have 
to keep on living outdoors. It’s been the loveliest 
trip ever was, but we couldn’t keep it up 
forever.” 

“That’s not the way to say it. It’s sad that 
you can’t keep up anjdhing, anywhere near for- 
ever,” said Mark. 

And this grown-up soimding, melancholy 
speech was so unhke Mark of the eyes that were 
the color of dead leaves in the woods, and danced 
as leaves did in the wind, that Isabel stared 
at him. 

“We are funny!” she repeated, as if proud of 
[186] 


THE BOTTLE LVIP 

agreeing with herself. ‘T said we were, and we 
are! We’re all like a glass of soda water that’s 
been standing.” 

“U-gh-h!” Prue shuddered. “Makes me sick! 
I feel sort of sickish, anyway.” 

“You haven’t caught anything, have you?” 
Mrs. Burke asked anxiously. “You never can 
tell what somebody’s down with in a back room, 
or upstairs, when you go into a strange house.” 

“I think before the day’s over we’re goin’ to 
have a thunder shower that you won’t have to 
listen to to hear, an’ that’s what ails the whole 
bunch,” said Mr. Burke. “It’s so hot that if we 
went a-fishin’ all you’d have to do is leave the 
fish lyin’ on the bank a few minutes, an’ he’d be 
done to a turn, crisped at that, ready for the 
table, brown, an’ maybe peppered, though I’d 
not go so far as to promise that.” 

“I’m going to get out and lie somewhere in 
the sun and bake my hair brown; I’m sick of red 
hair,” announced Poppy. 

“Why would it make us all feel cranky, if a 
thunder shower were coming?” asked Prue. 

“Now there’s the naturalist of this expedi- 
tion,” said Mr. Burke, pointing his whip at 
Mark. “Why would it, professor?” 

“It’s warm; the air is heavy before showers, 
and dad says nerves get jumpy when the atmos- 

[ 187 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


phere is heated and electrified,’^ said Mark. 
“I’m going back to the buckboard, untie Hurrah 
from this wagon, and drive alone, if no one 
minds.” No one minded, and Mark carried out 
his suggestion. 

Prue and Isabel undid the knots in the rope 
which had “garlanded” the wagon with tinware 
the day before, and neatly rolled it up, not talk- 
ing the while. 

Poppy lay out at full length; little Carita- 
Jean napped, and cuddled her doll on waking. 
It was the first time that the Bottle Imp had 
gone along so quietly, but the air grew more 
and more oppressive. 

“My, oh, my!” exclaimed Poppy at last, start- 
ing up on her elbow. it hot!” 

“If you want to begin to be elegant. Miss 
Gladys Popham Meiggs, you’ll isay: ‘I feel 
really quite warm,’ ” suggested Prue sarcas- 
tically. 

“I don’t!” Poppy was decided in her refusal. 
“It would kill me to talk soft, like that, about it, 
when I’m pretty near melted, and all in.” 

Then suddenly there came the first roll of 
thunder, loud enough to make it prudent to seek 
shelter rapidly. The sun was darkened quickly, 
also ; the shower had been coming up to the rear 
of the wagon, unnoticed, and it had risen so 
[ 188 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

swiftly, that its first warning rumble did not 
allow much time to escape it. 

“Queer, but I thought I remembered houses 
along this road,” muttered Mr. Burke, touching 
Cork with his whip. 

Cork needed no urging; he knew as well as 
human beings did, in fact better, that a violent 
thunder storm was near. He broke into a run, 
and the wagon went clattering behind him, along 
a road that seemed to have as many stones on it 
as it had few houses. 

“There’s some sort of a poor shack yonder,” 
said Mr. Burke. “We’d do well to get under 
whatever offers, for there’s nothin’ in sight be- 
yond. I’ve taken another road from the one I 
was aimin’ at, that’s sure, for the one I wanted 
has plenty cozy farms an’ houses its full length. 
There’s a roof on that shack, though it doesn’t 
look to be too proud for leakin’.” 

It was indeed a tumble-down shack toward 
which Mr. Burke guided Cork, with Mark fol- 
lowing, striving to hold back Hurrah, who was 
so eager for a barn that he almost collided with 
the big wagon, trying to pass it. 

There was a shed, poor enough, but equal, in 
its degree, to the shack that stood for a house. 
Mr. Burke and Mark got Cork and Hurrah 
under the shed roof and covered them with their 

[ 189 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


rubber blankets; the big wagon, its curtains fas- 
tened down, standing at the shed opening, would 
serve to keep off part of the violence of the rain. 

“Come, then, in,” said Mr. Burke. “It’s on 
us.” 

The rain had not set in, but the sky was black ; 
the wind raged in eddying gusts that swept 
everything loose into circling piles, each pile the 
central point of its own miniature cyclone. The 
lightning flashes were frequent now, the thunder 
seemed continuous. Mrs. Burke clutched httle 
Carita close to her breast, and threw her skirt 
over the child, though the rain had not begun. 
Head down, she ran to the shack. 

The children streamed after her, Isabel and 
Mark, white to their hps, with their eyes big 
with excitement; Poppy so frightened that she 
stumbled as she ran. Mr. Burke picked her up 
and slung her under one arm hke a meal sack, 
to save her from falling. Prue was the least dis- 
turbed of them all. 

“What’s the use?” she said. “It’s coming just 
the same. Some one’s got to get these dogs out 
of it. They’re frightened into flts.” 

It was true that Semper Fidelis and Bunkie 
needed good offices. Cowering and trembhng, 
they slunk close to Prue, grateful for her atten- 
[ 190 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

tions, when Isabel and Mark were too excited 
to think of them. 

The small shack in which the officers and crew 
of the Bottle Imp found themselves had never 
been more than a two-room cabin, occupied once 
as a house by some one whose poverty must have 
been great. Now one end of it was pretty well 
caved in; it was dark, dusty, dirty, and no one 
could have seen it without at once saying: ‘‘Oh, 
rats!” and not meaning it as slang, either! The 
first thought that the forlorn httle cabin sug- 
gested was of rats, and mice, and spiders. 

If the httle girls had been less hard-pressed 
they never would have dared to go into it, but 
when a frightful electric storm is at one’s back 
there’s no chance for squeamishness. 

Something scuttled around at the tumble- 
down end of the room when they came in. 
Bunkie, who was mostly Scotch terrier as to his 
descent, pricked up ears and courage, and went 
to investigate. 

“Oh, I’m thankful for Bunkie!” breathed 
Isabel. 

Just then the storm broke, directly over their 
heads, and she forgot to be thankful for any- 
thing. 

Thunder showers always made excitable, 
highly-wrought Isabel sick. She and Mark 

[ 191 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


were affected alike, with headache, nausea, chills. 
Now they held each other’s cold hands and, 
cowering, waited for the end, benumbed by the 
glare and noise. 

Poppy, on the other hand, could not keep still. 
She sang, danced about, shook out her gleaming 
hair, and acted beside herself. Now that the 
storm was actually upon them, her fear turned 
to a sort of madness of excitement. 

“You’re really awful, Poppy,” declared 
sorely-tried Prue. “I’m not so scared, but it’s 
no joke, and it’s awful to carry on, in such light- 
ning.” 

“I can jump’s quick’s it can, and how can it 
hit me when I’m all over?” cried Poppy. 

There is one comfort in anything that is very 
bad: it cannot last long when it is violent; 
thunder storms, fits of temper, great trouble, all 
wear out the sooner for getting to their climax 
and raging with all their might. 

This storm, which was a particularly bad one, 
passed on fairly soon, true to this rule. The rain 
kept up, but the lightning grew less frequent; 
the thunder rolled in longer waves, getting 
fainter, and the refugees from the Bottle Imp 
drew long breaths of relief. 

“Smells nice outside, now,” announced Prue, 
[ 192 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


going to the door and sniffing the freshened, 
rain-washed air. 

“I don’t care much for the musty smell inside; 
guess I’ll go out,” said Mark. 

“It’s a dreadful place,” said Isabel, looking 
around her with abhorrence. “My headache is 
gone; it always goes when the lightning stops. 
I’d like to go out, too.” 

“Mustn’t be ungrateful to the tramp house! 
It’s a good deal like a ragged old tramp, though 
it doesn’t tramp much, I’m thinkin’,” said Mr. 
Burke. “It kept us dry. It’s any port in a 
storm, you know, crew of the Bottle Imp! 
’Deed, then, ’tis a sorry lookin’ heap of decayin’ 
wood! It looks like a thieves’ den! I’d rather 
my roll was in the wagon than here, at night!” 

“You shouldn’t talk of your roll, Mr. Burke,” 
said Isabel, with a quick glance around, her 
imagination fired at this hint of adventure. 
“There may be thieves hidden.” 

“Well, there may be, but not so many, con- 
siderin’ the space,” laughed Mr. Burke. “We’ll 
go our ways ; there’s no rain failin’ now to harm 
us.” 

The horses were put into the shafts again and 
the small procession started. It was delicious 
to drive along the road, with puddles substituted 
for dust, and every least green thing giving off 

[ 193 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


its faint odor, made pungent by the rain. The 
birds sang ecstatically, preening and shaking 
themselves, grateful for refreshment after the 
heat. 

“Why, where is Bunkie?’’ cried Isabel when 
they had gone a little distance. “Mark, you 
haven’t Bunk back there, have you?” 

“No; only Semp,” Mark called back from the 
buckboard. 

“Oh, my dearest little Bunkie-dog!” cried Isa- 
bel distressed. “To think of not missing him till 
now ! Please let me out, Mr. Burke. I want to 
run back along the road, and caU him. He’ll 
hear me quicker than any one else.” 

“All right; you can’t come to harm along this 
road. I’m goin’ to stop a little farther on for 
lunch; there’s a spring near here. Go back, 
Isabel; Bunkie will be right after us,” said Mr. 
Burke. 

Isabel jumped out and started back along the 
way they had come, expecting every moment to 
meet Bunkie, scenting along on the wagon’s 
track. 

But this did not happen. She went on till she 
began to get quite alarmed, and finally she came 
to the tumble-down hut in which they had shel- 
tered from the storm. Whisthng and calling 
frantically, for by this time Isabel was thor- 
[ 194 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

oughly frightened about the small dog, she heard 
a yelp, as if Bunkie had been struck, and a harsh 
voice, bidding him: “Shut up!” 

Isabel did not know what fear was when 
danger threatened anything that she loved. She 
dashed into the house, and the joy of seeing her 
gave Bunkie additional strength, while it so 
startled his captor, holding him, that his hands 
relaxed. Therefore, from both causes, Bunkie 
jumped clear of him and dashed, whining and 
leaping, upon Isabel. 

Isabel gathered him up in her arms, though 
he was a good weight for her, and glared at the 
person who had captured him. She saw a young 
man of about seventeen, with a face that might 
have been handsome, but for the wickedness of 
its expression. 

“Well,” said this person, “what you doin’ 
swipin’ my dawg?” 

“It is my dog, as you probably know,” said 
Isabel coolly. “I’m taking him with me.” 

‘"Maybe you are!” said the big boy. “Then 
again maybe you ain’t! You talk pretty big for 
your size. Don’t you know. Miss Smarty-Cat 
Duchess, I could hit you once, and him once, and 
there wouldn’t be much left of you, nor your 
dawg?” 


[ 195 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


Isabel did know it; she also realized how far 
from the wagon she had come. 

“I haven’t time to talk to you,” she said, with 
a wave of her hand that belied her throbbing 
heart. And she turned to go. 

“Say, you’re some bluffer!” said the youth 
with admiration. “But that doesn’t go, my airy 
princess! Chnibi down! I’ll tell you what I’ll 
do ; I’U let you go with the dawg, safe, if you’ll 
tell me what you’re doin’ with my sister?” 

“Your sister!” cried Isabel, turning back, and 
forgetting her fear in surprise. 

“Red-headed Gladys Meiggs. I’d know her 
anywhere, thouigh she’s grown since I seen her,” 
said the youth nodding hard. “Your folks 
adopted her?” 

“No. No one has adopted her. She is taken 
care of by a lady,” said Isabel. 

“Well, I’U go after her, an’ I’U make that kid 
sick telhn’ her I’m her brother. Garland, and a 
few other things I could tell her, if you don’t do 
what I want you to,” said the young man. “I 
seen her when you was in here, keepin’ dry. It’s 
not me that wants her ; I don’t care what becomes 
of her, but if you don’t want me interferin’ with 
Gladdy, you just do’s I say.” 

“You haven’t said,” suggested Isabel. “And 
I don’t think you can harm Poppy — Gladys.” 

[ 196 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

“You call her Poppy, do you? Her second 
name’s Popham; family name!” laughed the 
rough, ugly looking youth. “You bet your life 
I can harm Poppy, sweet girl! You get me 
money, fifty dollars, an’ see I have it in four 
days, or I’ll make the kid’s life no joke. ’Sif I 
was goin’ to live poor, an’ have her livin’ on 
Easy Street! Who’s she, anyway?” 

“I’m not afraid of you,” said Isabel, hoping 
this was true; she did not feel as afraid as she 
had at first. “You can’t harm Poppy. But I’d 
hate her to know you were her brother. No one 
belonging to her has ever done her any good, and 
what could a little girl do for you? She hasn’t 
any money; not anything.” 

“Her friends have,” said the brother of poor 
little Poppy. 

“I’ll do my best to get the money you want, 
but I haven’t it myself, and I’m not near home. 
But I think I can get it. I’ll mail it to you, shall 
I?” said Isabel. 

“Yep,” said the youth, almost laughing at 
Isabel’s dignity and polite speech. 

“General delivery, Lytelton; I’m goin’ back 
there. Garland Meiggs’s the name. Is this 
honest truth?” 

“I never break my word,” said Isabel, and he let 
her walk away, head in air, Bunkie under her arm. 

[ 197 ] 


XIV 


RASH ISABEL 

I SABEL hurried along for a short distance, 
her wrath mounting, as she thought over the 
big brutish person whom she had just left; his 
threat to bother Poppy ; his demand upon herself 
for money, and, not least, the fact that he had 
caught and struck Bunkie, apparently intending 
to steal him. She began to wonder whether he 
really had meant to steal Bunkie. She also 
wondered why she had agreed to send this 
Meiggs youth fifty dollars. Of course she should 
not have done this ; she would not have so much 
to send. Even if she were successful in getting 
money, as she was vaguely planning to get it, she 
could not hope for so much, nor ought she give 
so much to an entirely worthless person, if she 
were to get it. 

Isabel never broke her word, but she was so 
angry with the Meiggs youth, when she came to 
consider him farther, that she decided that her 
promise to him must not be kept. Being Isabel, 
she would not withdraw from an agreement with- 
[ 198 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

out due notice to him, whom lawyers would 
call “the party of the second part.” 

Like a high-spirited and honorable, but fool- 
ish little ^girl, Isabel turned face-about, and re- 
turned to tell Garland Meiggs that she would 
not fully keep her agreement with him, 

“I’m not the least bit afraid of him, now,” she 
thought, head high, and a bright spot of color 
burning in each cheek. “I can’t be afraid of him 
when I despise him so. There isn’t room in me 
for both feelings.” 

Which was a fine spirit, but not wise, since 
there is often the best of ground for fear of a 
person to be despised. 

Isabel found the Meiggs youth lying on the 
grass in front of the shack. He jumped up when 
he saw her. 

“ ’Fraid I’d take cold on the ground after the 
rain?” he asked. “Come back to see how I was? 
That’s a nice kid, but I’m all right, thanks.” 

“Did you — what were you going to do with 
my dog?” Isabel demanded. 

“Say, did you come — Well, what’d yer know 
about that! Why do you want to know? Coin’ 
to give him to me, if I was goin’ to swipe him? 
That’s what I was, sis ! He ain’t such a much of 
a dog, but I’d get fifty cents for him,” said the 
youth. 


[ 199 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“Fifty cents! For that dog!’’ Isabel’s angry 
scorn made her almost unable to speak. “You 
*were going to steal him? I thought so!” 

“Great head! What else’d I do with him? 
Keep him for a pal, or eat him?” sneered this 
unworthy brother of poor little Poppy. 

It was the recollection of how wretched Poppy 
would feel if she could know that one of her 
brothers was such as this, and the fear that he 
might reveal himself to her, that forced Isabel 
to speak patiently to him. 

“I’ve been thinking that I should not have 
promised you fifty dollars — ” 

The Meiggs youth took a step toward her, 
scowling horribly, fist upraised. 

“Here you, none of that! You do what you 
said, or I’ll get busy,” he threatened. 

“I know I’ll never be able to get fifty dollars,” 
Isabel went on, not flinching from his furious 
face, and menacing fist. “I didn’t stop to reckon. 
I intend to do what I said, but I can’t send so 
much. I’ll send what I can get.” 

“Say, did^you come back to tell me that? Don’t 
you know I can kill you, an’ keep the dog? Who’s 
to know?” demanded Garland Meiggs wonder- 
ing, and unwillingly admiring this singular cour- 
age in slender little Isabel, whom a blow from his 
brawny hand would lay low. 

[ 200 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

‘T don’t seem to be afraid at all, now,” said 
Isabel truthfully, looking steadily up into his 
face. “You’re so dreadfully wicked, I just de- 
spise you. I came back because I knew I couldn’t 
do what I’d said I’d do, and I had to give you no- 
tice.” 

The Meiggs youth swore softly under his 
breath, and stared at her, frowning. He did not 
seem to know how to deal with such an extraordi- 
nary little girl. 

“What will you do, then? How much’ll you 
send, you young freak?” he demanded. 

“As much as I can. I can’t ask any one for 
money to send, for no one would let you have it, 
so I mean to earn it, and I know how I can get 
quite a little,” said Isabel. 

“Twenty five?” persisted Meiggs. 

Isabel considered before answering, and 
shifted heavy Bunkie, whom she had not dared 
let down out of her arms. 

“Say! Put him down, you luny; I won’t 
touch your cur,” Meiggs said. “If I wanted to, 
yer hangin’ to him wouldn’t stop me.” 

He was beginning to admire plucky Isabel. 

“I think, maybe, I can send you twenty-five 
dollars, but I don’t like to say positively, unless 
I know,” Isabel said after a pause of calculation. 

“That would be a hundred people, if we 

[ 201 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


charged twenty-five cents apiece, and that would 
be a good many people, yet I’m afraid we 
couldn’t charge more.” 

“What’s the idea?” asked Meiggs curiously. 

“A concert,” said Isabel turning away; she 
had no intention of entering into conversation 
with him. “Now I’ve notified you, which I had 
to do as long as I’d promised too much. I’ll send 
what I send where you told me to.” 

She walked away, not hurrying, still with head 
held high, and an air of unruffled dignity. 

The Meiggs person watched her away, with- 
out an attempt to interfere with her. He had 
never encountered anything at all like this timid, 
yet brave little person, who not only despised 
him, but told him so, yet who returned to what 
she unmistakably feared and loathed, to explain 
wherein she must alter a promise. There was no 
doubt that she would keep her word, Meiggs said 
to himself, and whatever she sent would be a 
windfall without labor on his part. Better let her 
go unharmed, dog and all, than torment her. Yet 
he longed to catch her and drag her back, just to 
see what the plucky little creature would do! 

Isabel met Prue and Mark coming to look for 
her; everyone whom she had left in the Bottle 
Imp and buckboard was getting alarmed over her 
delay. 

[ 202 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


‘Tsa, where have you been?’’ Prue reproached 
her as soon as they were within earshot. 

‘‘Well, only listen to what I’ve got to tell you!” 
cried Isabel. “I’m so glad you came! Poppy 
mustn’t know, and I was wondering how to get 
you off alone. Let’s sit down here, just a few 
minutes. I’ll talk fast, and I must tell you by 
ourselves! Besides I’m tired. I’ve been holding 
Bunkie, and he’s pretty heavy, when you’re 
standing up. Then I went back, and you know 
it’s quite a distance.” 

“Goodness me, how do we know!” cried Prue, 
impatiently, but reasonably. “We don’t know 
where you’ve been. But the Burkes are wor- 
ried, I can tell you, and Carita’s crying for you, 
so we can’t stay here more than a jilfy.” 

“All right.” Isabel agreed, and dropped 
wearily upon the grass. 

Then she poured out her story, making it short, 
and arose to go on, for the distance to where the 
Bottle Imp had been halted for lunch was great 
enough to allow discussion of plans before reach- 
ing it. 

Mark and Prue were more amazed over what 
she told them that she had expected them to be. 

“Of all things I ever heard!” exclaimed Prue, 
almost panting. 

“See here, Isa, it doesn’t do to be too brave, 

[ 203 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


and I don’t honestly think you owed any ex- 
planation of why you sent less money to such a 
good-for-nothing as that,” said Mark, already 
with a man’s sensible outlook upon obligations. 
“But you sure are a queer, dear piece of pluck! 
And you’re dead right to keep this chap from 
tormenting Poppy. Poor kid! And she’s so 
anxious to learn, and to be fine and nice ! It isn’t 
as though he’d ever been anything to her. He 
must be like their mother; she ran off, and left 
the whole lot of children. I suppose the father 
was all right, because he looked after them till 
he got killed, and then they were all scattered 
everywhere. But I’m not sure about giving him 
money, Isa. Most likely he’ll keep at us, if he 
gets it once, and Poppy’ll find out about him in 
the end.” 

“But you must help me this time, Mark Jack- 
in-the-Box! Because I’ve promised, and I’ve got 
to keep my word. You see I had to promise, be- 
cause Bunkie and I were there alone, and he 
could have killed either of us, or both of us, as 
easy! I had to do something! And if he tries to 
get any more money, we’ll tell our fathers and 
mothers, and let them settle him. But this time, 
Mark, we’ve got to send money.” — - 

“I wonder where we’d get it?” hinted Mark. 

“I have some; dad gave me enough for the 
[ 204 ] 


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trip in case anything terribly necessary had to 
be bought — ice cream sodas, or anything like 
that — and you have some, both of you, but we 
couldn’t scrape together much, now that we’re 
headed toward home and more supplies. Mine’s 
nearly gone. How much do you have to send?” 

“Twenty-five,” said Isabel feebly. 

“Dollars?” cried Prue, before Mark had time 
to speak. “Isabel Lindsay, you’re crazy! I 
should think Mark would ask where we’re to 
get it!” 

“I thought a concert — ” began Isabel, but got 
no farther. 

“A what?” Prue almost shrieked. “What con- 
cert? Whose concert? Who’d give it?” 

“We would,” Isabel rallied to her own de- 
fense. “We’d take a bam or something — some- 
body’d have to lend it — and we’d sing and — and 
— maybe we could act?” 

Isabel weakened as she saw the amazement, 
and the strong disapproval on Mark’s face, 
while Prue looked positively aghast. 

“Crazy! I said so!” murmured Prue. 

“It doesn’t seem to me we’d get much money, 
but I do think we might have a lot of fun,” Mark 
said, feeling that he must come to poor Isabel’s 
rescue. “We’d get twenty-five dollars’ worth of 
sport, giving a concert to the natives!” 

[ 205 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“What should you tell Mr. Burke? He’ll 
never let you send money to that man,” Prue ob- 
jected. 

“Yes, he would!” Isabel smiled happily, know- 
ing from experience that Thomas Burke could 
not deny her. 

“Here comes Poppy! We’ve got to stop talk- 
ing about it. Let’s ask her to let us three drive 
on the buckboard this afternoon; then we can 
finish up,” said Mark. 

Poppy came rushing upon them, warm and 
breathless, waving her arms frantically. 

“First you go, Isa, and we all thought you’d 
died or fainted away! And then Mark and Prue 
go to hunt you and don’t come back, and now 
they let me come, and I’m going to make you 
hurry!” Poppy called in broken sentences, as her 
breath let her speak. “Who’s come — s’pose? 
Guess!” 

“Couldn’t,” said Prue. “Must have come since 
we left.” 

“Well, ’course, if you didn’t see him!” Poppy 
scorned her. “Guess, I tell you!” 

“I know who I wish it was,” said Mark slowly, 
“and that’s Mr. de Nerval.” 

“Guessed first time!” Poppy cried triumph- 
antly, clapping her hands. “Only you didn’t 
[ 206 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

guess; you said you wished! Well, that’s who 
’tis!” 

“Oh, Mark, if he would!” gasped Isabel, know- 
ing why Mark had wished that the arrival might 
prove to be the great singer. 

“I’ll bet anything you like he’d think it the 
best kind of fun!” said Mark. “He’s the kind that 
knows fun when he sees it, and he’s a whole lot 
boy, still. 

The four who were the crew of the Bottle Imp 
“hastened to rejoin their ship” as Mark described 
their rapid trot down the road toward the wagon. 

They found the Burkes exceedingly uneasy 
over the absence of all their charges at once. They 
were inclined to censure Isabel for staying, till 
they heard from her the story of her adventures, 
omitting the important part of them that would 
have revealed who the young man was that had 
attempted to steal Bunkie. 

Mr. de Nerval looked delighted to see the chil- 
dren again — Poppy he had already seen. He 
was seated with Carita on his lap, talking to her 
in Italian, and the little creature was listening 
intently, sometimes replying with a few words in 
the same tongue. Her short memory of but four 
years in the world, stirred under the spell of her 
mother’s language and she watched Raoul de 
Nerval’s face intently; plainly she was puzzled 

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JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


by something, she was far too young to know 
what. Then he sang to the baby, and she sang to 
him. With but a few repetitions Carita learned 
from the great singer the delicately pretty set- 
ting of Robert Louis Stevenson’s : “Singing.” 

“Of speckled eggs the birdie sings 
And nests among the trees ; 

The sailor sings of ropes and things 
In ships upon the sea.” 

“She has the gift of her parents’ parent-land, 
this little one,” said Raoul de Nerval. “She is 
too tiny to prophesy as to her voice, but ear and 
feeling has she ! What memory of his childhood 
had Stevenson! Not memory so much, as keep- 
ing forever a child. I greatly love that tiny song 
— and the tiny singer 1” he added, kissing Carita’s 
flushed cheek with a fervor that won all that he 
might have lacked of Mrs. Burke’s regard. 

“Mr. de Nerval is goin’ with us a little way,” 
announced Mr. Burke. “He came along the 
road, never lookin’ to see us, an’ the wagon, when 
here he found us 1 He was just trampin’. He’s 
goin’ a little way with us in the wagon, which 
you’ll be none the worse for bearin’, I’m thinkin’, 
hearties of the crew!” 

[ 208 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

‘‘Oh, how nice!” “Oh, how lucky!” cried Isabel 
and Mark together. 

“Please, Pops, let Mark and me have the buck- 
board a while, and you stay with Prue in the 
Bottle Imp! We’ve something we want to tell 
Mr. de Nerval, but you’ll know it after we’ve told 
him, and got his advice. Would you mind driv- 
ing with us, all by ourselves, just a little while, 
Mr. de Nerval?” 

“I’d like it exceedingly, Isabel, dear little 
lady,” said Baoul de Nerval with a deep bow. 
“I am honored to be selected as confidant and 
councilor.” 

“Well, I like secrets myself, and I like to ride 
with Mr. de Vernal — Nerval,” said Poppy, half 
minded to object. 

But she thought better of it, and added : “But 
whatever Isabel wants, goes!” 

Isabel seated herself on the floor of the buck- 
board, at Mr. Nerval’s feet, in order to be where 
she might not miss a word, nor an opportunity to 
say a word, while Mark drove and Mr. de Ner- 
val sat beside him, on the single seat of the old- 
fashioned vehicle. 

Isabel told the story of her adventure once 
more, and this time told it entirely. 

“I promised, because Poppy must not see that 
person,” she ended. “And now I must get the 

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JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


money. Do you think we could have a concert, 
sell tickets, and all of us sing? Get the country 
people to buy, stop somewhere that the people 
need fun? Would it be very awful — our sing- 
ing?’’ 

“What strange children are the American chil- 
dren!” said Mr. de Nerval, eyeing Isabel with 
amazement. “I should lecture you, my dear, on 
your imprudence, but I am not fond of prudence, 
especially, and I find your anxiety to save your 
little glowing, singing friend beautiful. I think 
your singing would give much pleasure to any 
one with appreciation. It is sweet to hear chil- 
dren sing, who have talent! But mes petits en- 
fants, have you lost sight of the sport it will be? 
Such a lark ! And larks are the birds that sing, 
above all others ! I cannot understand a lady and 
gentleman of your age, forgetting that they are 
proposing an immensity of fun, n’est-ce pas? 
Now one word: Would you permit that I add 
myself to your company for a few days, and 
take part in this proposed concert? With your 
permission I will train you in some comedy sing- 
ing that will delight your bucolic audience. And 
— you graciously consenting! — I will, myself, 
sing.” 

“I don’t care how famous you are, you’re a 
straight good sport!” shouted Mark, so loudly 
[ 210 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

that the others ahead of them in the hig wagon 
heard, and turned to see what was happening. 

“Oh, Mr. de Nerval, how kind, how dear and 
kind you are ! It is too good to be true that you’ll 
help us, and approve of us!” cried Isabel, almost 
overcome by this great good fortune. 

“It is only good enough to be true. Nothing 
can be perfectly true that is not good. It may 
be actually so^ but not true^ because many things 
are tfue — that is they are so — which are not good, 
but anything that is perfectly true must be per- 
fectly good,” said Mr, de Nerval, smilingly en- 
joying his successful attempt to puzzle this girl 
and boy, whom he had come to like greatly, and 
to admire. “And if you will only think of me as 
dear to you, sweet Isabelle, as you just now called 
me, I shall be repaid if I take trouble for you — 
but this concert will not be trouble ; it will be the 
greatest sport, as I have said. When shall it be?” 

“Soon; it must be soon, because if the money is 
not soon sent, that awful man may bother 
Poppy,” said Isabel. 

“We must select the best place to hold it and 
begin to train for it at once,” declared Raoul de 
Nerval with refreshing enthusiasm. 


[ 211 ] 


XV 


THE LUCKY NATIVES 

M r. DE NERVAL’S enthusiasm did not 
cool. Mark had been quite right when he 
had said that he was “the kind that knew fun 
when he saw it,” and also that he was “a whole 
lot boy, still.” 

Mr. de Nerval began at once to get ready for 
the concert ; of course this was necessary since it 
must so soon be given. He explained to Mr. 
Burke that he would like to join his travelling 
party for a few days; he suggested getting a 
horse to ride beside the Bottle Imp, and, as there 
really was not room in the wagon for another 
person, this was done. The horse was hired from 
a small livery stable in the first village through 
which they passed, to be returned by Mr. de Ner- 
val when he was through with him. He deposited 
a hundred dollars, as a guaranty that this would 
be done, much to the wondering admiration of 
Poppy, who had no notion of how nearly her 
happiness was concerned in the events now be- 
falling them all. 

[ 212 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

At his request Mr. de Nerval was left to tell 
Mr. Burke about the concert plan. Just what 
Mr. de Nerval told him the children could not 
know; they warned him, repeatedly, not to be- 
tray the object of the concert, so perhaps he did 
not. Then again perhaps he did; understanding 
better than the children could that the whole 
affair would amuse Mr. Burke tremendously. 

Whatever he was told, Mr. Burke whole-heart- 
edly agreed to the concert-giving, and looked at 
Isabel with eyes twinkling more than ever during 
the few days of lively preparations. 

“We make for Uplands to give your entertain- 
ment,” said Mr. Burke. “Do you get yourselves 
ready for it, an’ I’ll do the rest. At Uplands 
there’s never a chance for an evenin’s good time, 
an’ I’ll lose my guess if the country people don’t 
turn out to hear you sing to ’em.” 

For two days Mr. de Nerval trained his ar- 
tists. He gave Isabel two sweet and pathetic 
little songs to sing; they suited her low voice, 
which had a natural pathos in its tones, rarely 
heard at her age. 

Prue had no solos; she was to help in the 
choruses, but he taught Poppy to sing three bril- 
liant songs, which her flexible, soaring child’s 
voice well produced. He taught her also an ex- 
ceedingly funny little song, which she was to 

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JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


sing in costume, her radiant hair to be washed 
in especially sudsy and soda-charged water to 
dry it, in order that it should fly around her as 
she danced the small dance required between the 
verses. Mark had two songs, and a duet with 
Isabel, and he offered to whistle bird calls. His 
father had taught him perfectly to imitate the 
notes of many birds, and he could whistle hke a 
whole pieful of four and twenty blackbirds. Mr. 
de Nerval accepted this offer with new enthu- 
siasm. 

“It’s going to be good, downright good! Not 
merely a frolic!” he declared. “And I’ll sing at 
the end, because a grown voice would spoil the 
effect of children’s voices following it.” 

He did not say “the voice of one of the great- 
est singers in the world,” though it would have 
been true. 

“And the baby must sing: ‘Of speckled eggs 
the birdie sings,’ ” declared Mr. de Nerval. “She 
will not be afraid, and she will delight the au- 
dience. Now I’m going to see what I can buy 
by way of costume for Poppy. Mark, will you 
come with me? And I want also to see if I can 
hire a piano, somewhere, and what we’re to do for 
a hall. And we must announce ourselves, some- 
how, but not with my real name.” 

They had reached Uplands, a pretty, sleepy 
[ 214 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


village, encircled by hills and fertile farms; the 
concert was to be on the next evening. 

Prue looked at him, with her characteristic 
foresight, considering these facts, and guessing 
at what this would cost; none of the other chil- 
dren gave expenses a thought. 

‘T should think,” observed Prue, “that twenty- 
five dollars would cost less.” By which she did 
not mean that twenty-five dollars was on the 
market for sale, but that sending the sum prom- 
ised, outright, to the Meiggs pirate would be less 
expense that paying the costs of the concert. 

Isabel frowned at her warningly, for Mr. 
Burke was within hearing. He did not appear to 
hear what Prue said, which made astute Isabel 
wonder if it were possible that he knew from Mr. 
de Nerval the whole story of giving the concert. 

Raoul de Nerval turned instantly upon Prue. 

“It is not merely the profit, my dear,” he said. 
“Think of the art at stake! And never pause to 
consider the profit!” 

“And think of the lucky natives who’ll hear 
us!” Mark supplemented him. 

He departed with Mr. de Nerval to attend to 
the three important items which he had enumer- 
ated. 

Mark came back, glowing with enthusiasm for 
Raoul de Nerval. 


[ 215 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“My gracious, he’s not only an artist; he’s 
a wizard!” he declared, taking the three little 
girls successively by the arm and talking hard, 
his left hand waving. “Why those country J akes 
were dead set against the whole thing, letting us 
have the schoolhouse — ^there’s no hall here — rent- 
ing a piano, coming to the concert, everything! 
They acted as if they were sure we were going 
to blow them up, if they came into a building we 
were using! They noticed Mr. de Nerval’s ac- 
cent, and you could see they were sure any one 
bom outside of America, probably, even of the 
state, was a criminal! I’ll never tell you how he 
did it, but he did it! He got them to let us use 
the schoolhouse, and a cranky old spinster said 
she’d rent her piano to us, and they all kind of 
said they’d come. They wouldn’t say it straight 
out; I think it would give them a pain to say 
something straight out that some one else wanted 
them to say ! — ^but they’re coming all right ! And 
Mr. de Nerval’s a wizard! He bought a costume 
for Pops that will be great. There wasn’t such a 
thing in Uplands as a costume, but he bought 
some diff erent things that will make a hit, when 
you put them together. Oh, he’s a wizard !” 

But Mr. de Nerval gave credit to the boy him- 
self for much of his success. “He is such a charm- 
ing lad, so modest with his great charm, his 
[ 216 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


beauty, his grace, his cleverness, that no one could 
resist him,” he said to Mrs. Burke. “I got Mark 
to coax a little, in his winning manner; as if he 
was sure no one could refuse to do anything so 
kind and pleasant as the thing he asked them to 
do, and one could see the somewhat surly sons — 
and grouchier daughters! — of the soil, thawing 
fast under the sunshine of Mark’s irresistible 
smile.” 

“Mark’s like no boy I ever saw,” agreed 
Mrs. Burke. “He has all sides in himself; he’s 
gentle and manly; brave and sensitive; beautiful 
and clever, yet without a bit of vanity. He’s more 
like you’d think a boy might have been in Eden, 
than any child I ever saw, for he’s full of some- 
thing that puts you in mind of a creature that 
grew out of doors, unharmed by human beings — 
and indeed, that’s what he is 1” 

The next day was so filled with business that 
it flew away, and yet seemed long, as time does 
when one is using it to its utmost value. 

Poppy, alone, refused to come to terms with 
duty. She behaved somewhat as Hurrah did 
when he was to be put into the shafts; she fooled 
and played, and would not rehearse properly, 
hardly would stand still to let Mrs. Burke fit the 
really effective costume which Mr. de Nerval’s 
cleverness had got together for her. 


[ 217 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“Now, Poppy, you’ve got to ! There’s just one 
thing about it: you’ve got to! How can you, 
when Mr. de Nerval’s so interested? And if you 
only knew — ” Prue said. She got no farther. 
Isabel jumped up, and down crying: 

“Oh, is it a bee? Is it a bee?” wildly dashing 
at an imaginary something in the air, till she 
caught Prue’s attention, and threatened her be- 
hind Poppy’s back, warning her to be careful 
what she said ; and the day was saved. 

“It is the artistic temperament that afflicts 
Poppy ; she is nervous, but she need not be,” said 
Mr. de Nerval kindly, so kindly that Poppy was 
ashamed of her flightiness, and submitted to be- 
ing fitted. 

“Let us go to the schoolhouse, Marcus gracil- 
Umus/^ suggested Raoul de Nerval. “I must try 
how I can make the piano sound least ill. I sus- 
pect it will be quite bad.” 

The piano had been brought into the school- 
house. Mr. de Nerval opened, and tried it. It 
justified his suspicion of it; a thin-toned old 
piano, never good, badly in need of tuning, with 
two important keys requiring to be poked up, 
before they could be struck down to emit a sound. 

Raoul de Nerval sat down to it, and, in spite 
of its infirmities, not to say fatal diseases, he suc- 
ceeded in getting out of it sounds that filled Mark 
[ 218 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


with new wonder and admiration for this 
musician’s extraordinary talent. 

‘‘Oh, we shall get along with it, Mark, never 
fear!” he said. “Now our early supper, then 
our grand performance! I feel sure that our au- 
dience will gather early.” 

It did. Mrs. Burke was to act as doorkeeper, 
Mr. Burke holding himself ready to render serv- 
ices with heavier tasks. 

Twenty-five cents was the admission price, 
adults and children alike. Mr. de Nerval had 
guaranteed “money back if the performance was 
not satisfactory.” 

Remembering the hundreds of dollars paid 
him nightly for singing, and the prices at which 
seats were sold for hearing him, he greatly en- 
joyed giving this pledge. The schoolroom was 
early filled, and Mrs. Burke had thirty dollars in 
the bag, with which she had provided herself to 
carry the receipts. Her duty done, she slipped 
into a vacant seat, leaving stragglers, who were 
both late and dishonorable, to come in without 
paying, if they would, and gave herself up to en- 
joying herself. 

A tuneful little chorus opened the concert, 
followed by Isabel’s first solo; then a solo by 
Mark, and next Isabel and Mark’s duet. By 
this time the audience was eagerly listening; 

[ 219 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


they had not expected such pleasure from chil- 
dren’s singing. 

When Mark gave his bird calls, a man in the 
audience laughed aloud from sheer pleasure. 

“Catbird, b’gum! And a chewink!” he cried. 
“Say, you’ve got ’em down right, hoy!” 

When Poppy sang there was a hush of surprise 
over the crowded room, for by this time it was 
crowded. She sang wonderfully; the clear, true, 
child voice soaring up and up, trilling like a lark. 
Poppy had instantly understood Mr. de Nerval’s 
instructions, and her singing imitated that of a 
trained artist in a way that delighted everybody, 
but him most, as best knowing its value. 

“I bet she’ll beat Putty!” called out some one, 
and Isabel and Mark, at least, knew that the 
woman meant Patti. They went into spasms of 
laughter, crouching out of sight behind staid 
Prue. There was no space behind the platform; 
the artists had to sit on the stage awaiting their 
turns. 

Mr. de Nerval signalled to Mark, who went 
down to the front row of seats, and took little 
Carita by the hand, to lead her to the stage. The 
little creature, with her large soft eyes gazing up 
at her friends on the stage, came, unafraid, and 
took her place alone, in the middle of the stage. 

There was a burst of applause, instantly 

[ 220 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

checked for fear of frightening the child, but she 
showed no sign of consciousness. 

Isabel bent to her and hummed the first line of 
her song. Mr. de Nerval softly played the air; 
Carita had not been trained to sing with a piano 
accompaniment, but the small girl sang without a 
mistake her dear little song, her thread of voice 
reaching to the door. 

“Such a baby!” cried one woman. “Such a 
darling!” cried another. “So pretty, too!” a third. 

Then the applause came, a storm of it. Mrs. 
Burke was crimson with pride in her treasure. 
The childless woman was so happy in having 
Carita that it was pathetic. 

“Oh, God love her!” she said aloud, wiping her 
eyes. 

“Well, doesn’t He?” said the Methodist min- 
ister, sitting next to her; a long, solemn-looking 
man, not in the least like one to join in such an 
expression. 

All the other numbers went off well, but 
Poppy, in costume, with her floating, glow- 
ing hair, and her little dance between verses, 
was more than a success. She received such ap- 
plause that there was nothing to be done but to 
repeat the song, which she did, with ten times 
its first spirit, being by that time wound up to 
the highest pitch by her own performance. 

[ 221 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


Then, all the children being through with their 
contributions, Raoul de Nerval sang. 

There was not a sound in the room as the mar- 
vellous voice filled it; deep and high, sweet and 
brilliant, indescribably lovely. No one there had 
ever before heard such singing. No one knew 
that they were having a treat for which the world 
would have sacrificed much, but the audience 
knew that it was listening to almost unearthly 
beauty of sounds, and it listened, spell-bound. 

Everything must end. Raoul de Nerval fell 
into a melody of Schumann’s as a finale, and the 
concert was over. 

“Say, young boy, he can sing!” said a farmer 
to Mark. 

“Yes, he can,” agreed Mark. 

Then he had an inspiration. “He’s a great 
singer, a famous singer,” he said. “He doesn’t 
want his real name known. I’ll ask him to send 
it to you next fall, when it won’t make any dif- 
ference; his vacation will be over. If he will do 
this, you’ll know who you’ve heard, and that he 
surely can sing!” 

“Well, whatever his name is, I guess we’re on to 
his singin’, as ’tis,” retorted the farmer. “You’ve 
given us an awful good show, and a real pleas- 
ant evenin’, and instid of gettin’ our money back, 
[ 222 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

I, for one’d be willing to pay at least a quar- 
ter more a head, for my whole famly.” 

“No, indeed; glad you hked it a quarter’s 
worth!” cried Mark laughing, and joined the 
others, gathered around Mrs. Burke to count up 
results. 

“Thirty one dollars and fifty cents. Six people 
came in late, and hunted me up, afterwards, to 
pay their admissions,” announced Mrs. Burke. 
“I understand I’m to hand it all over to Isabel — 
that right?” 

“That’s right,” said Mr. de Nerval, and Isabel 
looked embarrased. Suddenly she realized that 
it would be difficult to explain what she had done 
with the money. Consequently, being embar- 
rassed she cried: 

“But what shall I do with the six dollars and a 
half?” 

Instantly Poppy pounced upon her, crying: 

“Six dollars and a half I What’ll you do with 
the — the — other part, the most of it?” 

Although she was quick at arithmetic. Poppy 
was too excited to substract six and a half from 
thirty-one and a half, on the spot. Her brain was 
throbbing under her out-standing halo of hair, 
that looked more than ever hke flames. 

“That,” said Prue, with admirable presence of 
mind, and such solenmity, that even irrepressible 

[ 223 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


Poppy was subdued, “is something that you can- 
not know yet, Poppy, because Isabel may not tell 
you, but you shall know, just as soon as the right 
time comes. You must not ask.” 

“You must all get to bed, and to sleep just as 
fast as you can,” declared Mrs. Burke, rocking 
Carita in her arms, whose dark head was nodding. 
“You all look as if you were going to fly away, 
you’re that excited — except Poppy, and she looks 
as if she had flown away! Up some chimney, and 
lighted here! It’s late, and to-morrow we’ll be 
startin’ away from Uplands betimes. What’s my 
man, Tom, doin’?” 

“He’s gone after the men to take away the 
piano. Mr. de Nerval had to promise to get it 
home to-night, or the woman who owned it 
wouldn’t let him have it,” explained Mark. “Mr. 
de Nerval, we couldn’t thank you, Isa, Prue, 
Poppy and I, but we do.” 

“No, dear boy, it is I who thanks you for the 
best frolic I’ve had in years,” said Mr. de Nerval 
sincerely. “It was all fun for me, and you are 
talented youngsters. Do you think, Mark, that 
I should be received if I rode with you to Green- 
acres to see your father? I should like to talk 
of Poppy to her protectors. As to my horse, I 
will write his owners that I will get him back to 
them later ; they have my deposit for him. Should 
[ 224 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

I be frowned upon if I rode beside you to Green- 
acres, will you honestly tell me?” 

“Indeed you would not be! Indeed you’d be 
welcome!” cried Mark. “Will you go? We were 
wondering how we could say good-by to you! 
You’re not the great singer to us now; you’re 
some one we love!” 

“What a truly sweet speech, dear boy!” cried 
Mr. de Nerval, throwing his arm over Mark’s 
shoulder, and drawing him close. “I may be a 
great singer, but I am also a lonely man, and I 
love your love!” 

“Come now,” said Mr. Burke, suddenly ap- 
pearing, “I’ve got the carters here, an’ let my 
crew be off to sleep! In the mornin’ we start 
toward Greenacres, for, alas, an’ worse luck, the 
voyage of the Bottle Imp is nearly over!” 


[ 225 ] 


CHAPTER XVI 


THE BOTTLE IMP COMES TO ANCHOR 

T he road from Uplands ascended in the di- 
rection of Greenacres. 

The Bottle Imp, and its attendant buckboard, 
climbed the hills on the morning after the con- 
cert, and soon Uplands looked like down lands, 
lying as it now did below them. 

Isabel and Mark had risen early to dispatch 
twenty-five dollars to Garland Meiggs, at Lytel- 
ton, according to agreement; they were waiting 
at the post office of the small village for it to 
open, which it did not do till seven; they had to 
wait nearly an hour. 

Mark wrote an excellent hand, quite a grown- 
up hand, so he folded the postal money order 
within a sheet of paper, on which he boldly wrote: 

“Any further attempt to annoy will not only 
not get any money for you, but will be properly 
punished.” And he signed it with a great flour- 
ish: “Mr. M. Hawthorne.” Which signature, 
though not in correct form, looked most manly 
and decided. 

[ 226 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

It was a real relief to get the money off, and 
the whole unpleasant matter closed, as Isabel and 
Mark believed it to be, although it was to open 
up again later on. 

The girl and boy hurried back to the Bottle 
Imp, and were late to breakfast. They had a 
hard time fending off Poppy’s questions, who 
was no end curious as to what they had been do- 
ing, where they had been. She was much too 
sharp not to see that there was a mystery afoot, 
that was a mystery only to her, clearly under- 
stood by all the others. 

“Oh, it’s so lovely, so perfectly lovely, to be 
driving along these roads early every morning!” 
sighed Isabel, sniffing the pungent odors of hem- 
lock and pine as they slowly mounted the hills, 
plentifully grown with these trees. 

“Do you tliink we shall not go off again, after 
we get to Greenacres this time?” 

“Would you be sorry to stay at home?” asked 
Mr. Burke. 

“I miss home a great deal,” said Isabel con- 
sidering. “You know my mother is my dear- 
est, most intimate friend! And Mr. Harvey 
Lindsay, my father, is a gentleman I like ever 
so well ! And I miss Mark’s house, and Mother- 
kins, and his nice dad, and Chateau Branche, 
and our woods, and the brook, and everything! 

[ 227 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


But this has been such a very lovely trip, such a 
wonderful trip, when you think of all that’s hap- 
pened! I believe I’d like to start out once more! 
Shall we?” 

“Well, my dear,” said Mrs. Burke, “that’s ac- 
cordin’ ! If you’re not so well that you don’t need 
it, we’ll go, and be glad to. But if you’re all 
cured — and it’s my belief that’s what the doctors 
will tell you — then I’d want to settle down in my 
own house, at 906 North Street, and begin livin’ 
with my little girl, that the good God sent; me 
needin’ her and her needin’ me! And she’s need- 
in’ dresses, and I’d like to be fixin’ her up the way 
you can’t, livin’ in a cart. So we’ll see, Isabel, 
my sweet, and it’s sad I’ll be, myself, endin’ this 
summer, which has been such a fine one, however 
I’d like to be at home with Carita.” 

“Don’t you think it’s rather like riding in a 
closed coach, with a knight on horseback guard- 
ing you, the way they did in old-time stories, 
to have Mr. de Nerval riding that horse beside 
the wagon?” asked Prue unexpectedly; it was 
usually Isabel, or Mark, who made this sort of 
suggestion. “But, of course,” Prue continued, 
“they always rode a steed, and I suppose you 
couldn’t call that livery horse a steed; he’s too 
calm.” 

[228] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

Isabel, Poppy and Mark laughed; the livery 
stable hack was surely at least “calm!” 

These final four days of the journey were long, 
because they were filled with conflicting feelings. 
The children clung to each hour left them of this 
happy ^psying, yet with home ahead of them, 
and all that they best loved awaiting them, it was 
not possible to escape the strain of impatience to 
get there. 

Isabel expressed the contradictions of these 
days when she said: 

“I feel as if I were two cherries tied on each 
end of a string, and two chickens had picked up 
each of them, and were walking off in opposite di- 
rections 1 I want to hold the wheels still, so they 
can’t turn, yet I want to jump up and fly home!” 

“When you want two things that can’t be had 
at the same time, then be glad of whichever you 
get, and forget all about the other,” advised Mr. 
de Nerval, who was at that moment riding on a 
walk beside the buckboard in which Prue and 
Isabel were just then driving alone. 

On the fourth day, after three wonderful 
nights in camp, when Mr. de Nerval had sung 
and sung to them beside a blazing fire that the 
August evening chill made welcome, and be- 
neath which they roasted potatoes, while corn 
roasted in the coals, the Bottle Imp began to 

[ 229 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


descend toward the river. It turned into a fa- 
miliar road, at the end of which, though still some 
eight miles distant, lay Greenacres. 

‘'Oh my!” cried Poppy later, when the tallest 
spire of the town came in sight. ‘‘My grand- 
mother, just look there!” 

“Not your grandmother. Pops; your mother- 
town though!” laughed Mark, but his own eyes 
were bright with gladness, and his cheeks were 
flushed. 

Greenacres surely looked pretty to the chil- 
dren as they came into it. They had seen many 
charming villages; a succession of lovely mead- 
ows and wooded hills, and one large, thriving 
town, but Greenacres, with its neat streets; its 
great overhanging elms; its orderly lawns and 
well-designed houses; its glimpses of the river 
every now and again, as one went past cross 
streets reveahng it — where was there another 
such beautiful town as Greenacres? 

“Well, it takes the cake here!” cried Poppy, 
jumping up and down in her seat, in a frenzy of 
joyous welcome to her home. 

Mr. de Nerval laughed at the enthusiasts, but 
it was with a tender understanding, and he bent 
over from “his steed” to sing softly to the chil- 
dren: 

[ 230 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

“‘A charm from the skies seems to hallow us 
there 

Which seek tliro’ the world is ne’er met with 
elsewhere.’ ” 

Whereupon all four took up the refrain: 
“ ‘Home, home, home, sweet homel’ ” 

The melancholy old song had never before 
seemed to them so alive, so true. 

That was it! Other places might be ever so 
beautiful; Greenacres was home, where their 
hearts stayed. They discovered, to their sur- 
prise, that all this time, in aU the delights of 
gypsying in the Bottle Imp, their hearts had been 
right here, in Greenacres! 

And then, oh, then the Hawthorne house came 
in sight ! Mr. Burke had made a turn that took 
him directly thither. 

Isabel and Prue nobly restrained any expres- 
sion of longing to fly, first, to their own homes, 
much as they yearned to hug their mothers and 
to be hugged by them, and Prue had sisters for 
whom she longed, though at times they tried her 
somewhat when she was at home. 

They could not know, for they had not been 
told, that a telephone message had been sent on 
the way to Greenacres, asking Mrs. Wayne and 

[ 231 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


Mrs. Lindsay to be at Hawthorne House when 
they arrived, but this was the case. 

Therefore as the Bottle Imp and the buck- 
board came up the driveway, with Bunkie wildly 
barking* his satisfaction at coming home, and 
Semp out over the wheels and tearing ahead to 
get to Mr. Hawthorne, there on the piazza stood, 
not only dear little Motherkins, and “Mr. 
Dadde,” as Isabel and Prue had called Mark’s 
daddy when they first knew him, and Flossie 
Doolittle and Ichabod Lemuel Budd, and Pin- 
cushion, with her twin kittens, but Isabel’s mother 
and Prue’s mother, their impatience evident as 
they espied their little girls standing up in the 
wagon, wildly waving to them. 

“Great Scott!” shrieked Poppy, and out she 
went, without waiting for the wagon to stop, and 
sprawled full length in the driveway, so that the 
intelligent Cork had to step over her body as he 
went on, there being no time for Mr. Burke to 
check him. But Cork did step over her, and 
Poppy picked herself up and ran on, catapult- 
ing on Motherkins, none the worse for her rash- 
ness except that she had collected gravel. 

“That Poppy!” exclaimed Mr. Burke. “Sure, 
I don’t know whether she’s saved to be a great 
singer, or not, but by all right she should be Hlled 
this long time, yet nothin’ harms her! 

[ 232 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


There was a tumult of welcome on the piazza 
when the other three children followed Poppy, 
but by the proper method of dismounting. Every- 
body uttered exclamations of delight at Isabel’s 
browned cheeks and the soft color mingling with 
the tan on them. 

“My darhng, you look welir cried Mrs. Lind- 
say, and there was a whole psalm of thanksgiving 
in her voice. 

Mr. de Nerval sat on his horse for a few 
moments, observing the scene with high delight, 
glad to be forgotten for so good a reason. 

But Mr. Hawthorne soon was conscious of the 
neglected and famous guest ; he hurried down the 
steps to him. 

“Not dismounted, Mr. de Nerval?” he cried. 
“I am mortified, but you know we are fond of 
these four wanderers! Pray come in! Ichabod, 
will you please take this horse?” 

“I do not mean to intrude, Mr. Hawthorne,” 
said Mr. de Nerval, studying and admiring his 
host’s remarkably sensitive and handsome face, 
like and yet unlike to Mark’s play of constantly 
varying expression. “I have come to discuss 
with you the future of that singularly talented 
bit of electricity which you shelter, and which you 
call Poppy.” 

“There is plenty of time for that, Mr. de Ner- 

[ 233 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 

val/' said Mr. Hawthorne. “We are delighted, 
my mother and I, to have a chance to thank you 
for your kindness to our boy, and his little girl- 
comrades, of whom we are almost as fond as of 
Mark. So Poppy’s fate can wait — I hope? You 
are not obliged to leave us immediately?” 

“Ah, no; I am on a long vacation, hiding my- 
self, because I was badly over-tired, but I had no 
intention of intruding,” said Raoul de Nerval, 
and Mr. Hawthorne saw why Mark, in writ- 
ing of him, had said that “he was like a big boy.” 

“I don’t think that would be the word for a 
visit to us,” said Mr. Hawthorne. His smile said 
more than his words, and Raoul de Nerval re- 
sponded to it at once. 

“You are, indeed, Mark’s father!” he said, lay- 
ing his hand on his host’s shoulder, and accepting 
his friendship with his hospitality. 

After they had supped, and the flood of talk- 
ing had run somewhat slower and little Carita, 
who had instantly loved and been loved by 
Motherkins, had gone contentedly to sleep in her 
lap, the four newly-arrived children set out to ex- 
plore their best-loved spots, while Mr. Haw- 
thorne and Mr. de Nerval sat with their cigars on 
the eastern end of the piazza, enjoying the frag- 
rant night air, the rising moon, and discussing 
unconscious Poppy, over whose future Mr. de 
[ 234 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

Nerval wished to extend his help. He took se- 
riously the queer child’s promise of one day de- 
lighting the world with her voice, and her use of 
it. 

“Let’s go to the Toy Shop first!” cried Prue. 

When Mark had been known to the little girls 
only by the nickname they gave him of “ Jack- 
in- the-B ox,” because of his mysterious appear- 
ances and disappearances, they had called the 
place where they first met him “the Toy Shop,” 
since only in a toy shop does one buy jack-in-the- 
boxes. 

It was a pretty little glade-like clearance in 
the woods, dear to the children, but to-night there 
was not time to do more than to salute it happily, 
glad to see it again, and to see it unchanged. 
Then they ran on to Chateau Branche, and 
climbed up into it, still more glad to get back to 
this ideal playhouse. 

“Oh, I don’t know, Isa, about going in the 
Bottle Imp again,” said Prue slowly. “It was 
perfectly lovely, and I hated to think we weren’t 
going back in it, but now — ^well, isn’t this great !” 

“It is greatest!” affirmed Isabel, cutting out 
other comparisons. 

“Even if you aren’t quite — quite — ” Prue hesi- 
tated; she disliked suggesting to Isabel that she 
might not be perfectly well. 


[ 235 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


“Quite spotless? On my lungs? All right, 
Prue! If I’m not, what then?” Isabel laughed. 

“I think, perhaps, you could get the doctor to 
let you sit here every day for the rest of the sum- 
mer. It’s so lovely up in Chateau Branche!” 
Prue finished her sentence and snuggled up Pin- 
cushion’s twin kittens. 

Pincushion was bringing up her children to 
follow Mark as she had always followed him; 
now she and the fluffy pair of innocents were in 
the tree with their human friends, though the kit- 
tens had been helped up. Bunkie sat below, just 
as he had always sat ; Semp lay beautifully 
spread out beside him. It did not seem to the 
children that they could have been away. 

Mrs. Lindsay came out to the tree, seeking 
Isabel. She paused beneath it. 

“Isabel, dear,” she said, “will you come back 
to Hawthorne House? Mr. Burke is anxious to 
have it decided whether he is to take you with 
him again, so we telephoned the doctor to come 
up and see how he finds you. He is waiting for 
you. You may come back to Chateau Branche, 
if Prue and Poppy and Mark care to wait for 
you here; it will not be long. Then I will come 
this way and pick you up when we go home to- 
night; Mrs. Wayne and I will come this way.” 

Isabel descended from the platform house in 
[ 236 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

the great pine, and joined her mother. The other 
three watched her away, appearing and disap- 
pearing under the trees. The shadows of the 
limbs cut off the moonlight, yet the spaces al- 
lowed it to fall on Mrs. Lindsay and Isabel, 
fondly encircling each other with their arms, and 
leaning toward each other as they walked. 

“Pretty nice, Isa Bell!” said Mark. 

“No one else so sweet, so wonderful as Isa,” 
said Prue. 

“Pooh! S’pose you think no one else knows 
it!” Poppy scorned her. Then she added in 
quite another tone, after a moment’s silence, what 
the other two were thinking. 

“What’d you s’pose that old doctor’ll say? 
Suppose Isabel wasn’t well, like we think she is ! 
S’posing she would never be, not everl” 

“Silliness!” cried Prue sharply. “Silliness! 
We know she is ; she will be!” 

After this the two little girls, and the one boy, 
sat in Chateau Branche quietly waiting in silence 
for Isabel to return. 

At last she came running, catching her toe in 
a ropey root and tripping, but then righting her- 
self and coming on, still running. 

“It’s all right!” Mark breathed the words, his 
low voice tense. 

Isabel halted under the tree. 


[ 237 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


‘‘Give me a hand up, please, Mark Jack-in- 
the-Box!” she cried gaily. 

Then, as up she came, she said, and her lovely 
face was all alight with happiness, not merely 
over the goods news for herself, but that she knew 
her comrades were to be made happy by it : 

“Well, girls and boy, what do you think? Just 
what we did think ! The doctor says I am not the 
least bit in the world spotted now! He says it 
has all gone off beautifully; not a sign of a spot 
on my lung now ! That blessed Bottle Imp, and 
our fine times, have cured me!” 

“Isa!” cried Prue, and hugged Isabel violent- 
ly, while Poppy, managing to catch Isabel 
around the waist at the same time that Prue got 
her around the neck, nearly made her lose her 
balance and fall out of Chateau Branche. 

“You nice Isa!” said Mark, as if all the credit 
of their escaping a keen sorrow were Isabel’s. 

“Then we sha’n’t go out in the Bottle Imp 
again?” said Poppy. 

“Not on a trip. Mr. Burke is going right back 
to Hertonsburg in the morning to let Mrs. Burke 
sew for that dear little Carita! She’s so crazy to 
do it! I’m glad not to have to ask her to stay 
away from home any longer for me. Though 
what we’ll do without that baby, I don’t see ! The 
sweet thing!” cried Isabel. “And, Poppy, Mr. 

[ 238 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 


de Nerval is to be a sort of guardian to you, with 
Mr, Hawthorne, and if you still can sing when 
youVe old enough to be trained, he’ll see that you 
have the best training, learn to be a fine, maybe 
even a great, singer. Isn’t that news?” 

Poppy turned painfully crimson, and choked, 
“Me? Poppy Meiggs? Well, what’d you 
you know about that!” she gasped. 

It was slang, forbidden to Poppy, but even 
Prue, the strict, felt that under such stirring cir- 
cumstances, it was wise to pass it over. 

“Our mothers are coming right along in a 
minute, Prue; it’s after ten. We’d better be 
down, and ready to go when they come. They’re 
having the nicest time up at the house, perfectly 
fine time! They’re sort of celebrating our get- 
ting home, and my being quite, quite cured. 
Poppy’s luck, Mr. de Nerval’s visiting us, Mrs. 
Burke having the darling child, when she was so 
missing her own children, and even our finding 
little Jean Lamb — Mr. Burke was telling it all 
over again, though we did write it. Mr. de Ner- 
val has been singing the dearest songs; out of the 
south of France, he said they were, and the doctor 
is perfectly happy. He says he’ll never go on 
another professional call as long as Mr. de Ner- 
val will sing for him! Poor, nice Doctor! He 

[ 239 ] 


JACK-IN-THE-BOX 


loves music dearly, and he doesn’t get a chance 
to hear it, often!” 

‘‘We ought to have stayed up at the house,” 
said Prue. 

“No indeed!” Mark quickly set her right. “We 
have heard Mr. de Nerval sing, and we shall 
again. What is half as nice as Chateau Branche 
in this moonlight, with the piney smell all around 
us, and that little owl, over there, cheering about 
it? I’ll bet none of you heard him! I’ve been 
listening to him for ten minutes, and now I see 
him all hunched up on a limb! And aren’t we 
celebrating, too, in a quiet way? But I tell you 
Isa’s cure is getting celebrated all right — by me, 
for one ! And the little owl !” 

“Oh, Mark, it is nice, isn’t it!” sighed Isabel. 

And at that moment her mother called : 

“Isabel, Isabel, dearest! Ready!” 

And Mrs. Wayne echoed: “Prue, Prudence 
child! Time to go home!” 

“All ready, mothers both!” Isabel called back, 
and the four children came down from their be- 
loved pine tree residence. 

“All ready for home, motherums, and its going 
to be nice to get into my dear room and comfy 
bed, though gypsying was fine! Good night, 
Poppy and Mark! Good-by, for a while ! Sleep 
sound and dream of our blessed Bottle Imp! 

[ 240 ] 


THE BOTTLE IMP 

Dream nice things about it, for it has cured me!” 

“Good night, Isa, you peach! It had better 
cure you !” cried Poppy with a parting squeeze. 

“So say we all of us, Isabel,” Mark echoed. 
“Good night! And I, for one, think the Bottle 
Imp was more of a Bottle Angel to us! We’ve 
had a trip !” 

“We’ve had a voyage!” Isabel corrected him. 
“A voyage which the crew of the Bottle Imp 
could never forget. But after all it’s nice to be 
at anchor — anchored to my anchor!” Isabel put 
an arm around her adored mother, and held her 
close, to point her meaning. 

Then the crew of the Bottle Imp dispersed, un- 
der the moonlight shadows, to a refreshing sleep. 


[ 241 ] 



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